gear-loose

2011-07-02T17:06:00.000-07:00

2011-06-05T16:17:00.000-07:00

My Dad Is A Dork

2011-05-28T19:01:00.000-07:00

WTF

2011-05-26T00:33:00.000-07:00

Why is this my most popular blog according to Analytics? And the number of followers?

Hey dudes, I don't post here any more.

If you're reading this, why don't you raise your hand and explain who you are and why you're here. Cheers.

The Stones

2011-03-31T20:52:00.000-07:00

A surge of love lately.

Oh no this happened

2011-02-24T21:58:00.001-08:00

REFERENCE

2011-01-03T19:54:00.000-08:00

Before I deleted them all, I thought I'd post some of the more interesting reference photos I've taken in the past. I usually take a few for each tricky pose in some comic I'm drawing.

These were all taken with the Mac's Photo Booth app.

2010

2010-12-31T18:42:00.000-08:00

went to San Francisco for the first time.

went to Burning Man for the first time.

taught myself to ink with a brush.

taught myself watercolor.

was paid by company to draw things for the internet.

was paid by the government to draw things on post-it notes.

bought a car.

adopted a cat.

removed a wart I had since I was 12.

turned 30.

that's that.

-__-

2010-11-24T01:25:00.000-08:00

This story keeps building. I like what it's becoming.

I think I can start the comic in January.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1269288/STEPHEN-HAWKING-How-build-time-machine.html

LOL

2010-10-21T23:44:00.000-07:00

Hey, what's that thing there?

Why it's that monkey I drew! On a real website!

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO

2010-10-19T23:26:00.000-07:00

LAST.FM STATS AS OF 10/19/10

(The Trent Reznor is THE SOCIAL NETWORK soundtrack.)

ALEX TOTH

2010-10-10T18:59:00.000-07:00

2010-09-28T21:30:00.001-07:00

On the same day, I received in the mail:

A) a check, made out to my name, for a good - but not great - sum of money, for some drawings I made for a company. And,

B) a handwritten letter from a friend, thanking me for the drawing I had made and given to her as a birthday gift.

One of these things means a lot to me, and I am proud to have earned it.

And the other I will cash.

Before You Slip into Unconsciousness, I'd Like to Have Another Kiss

2010-08-20T19:33:00.000-07:00

This lyric not only feels perfectly appropriate to the movie, but also acts as a goal: to see it once more before it leaves theaters. It will be my third time.

wormhole

2010-07-28T13:25:00.000-07:00

2010-07-26T04:42:00.001-07:00

Last night a girl told me I looked funny. She said that if she was in a restaurant, she wouldn't be able to eat because she would be laughing too much.

IMG00011-20100701-1530

2010-07-23T01:34:00.000-07:00

I took a picture of Summer with my cellphone to prove to myself that it exists and I was there and for one brief moment I recognized what it was.
Then I saved it, and tagged it "summer," and put it away as a souvenir.

GUNNISON, CO

2010-07-13T08:40:00.000-07:00

Weather

Gunnison is located at the bottom of several valleys. Due to its location in the Rocky Mountains, cold air in all the valleys settles into Gunnison at night, making it one of the coldest places in winter in the United States, especially when snowpack is present. The average January low is −8 °F (−22.2 °C), and the average July high is 82 °F (28 °C). The record low is −60 °F (−51.1 °C), recorded at Blue Mesa Reservoir. The record high is 98 °F (37 °C), set on August 15, 1931. [1]

--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunnison,_Colorado

2010-07-10T19:56:00.000-07:00

times that we met
before we met
we'll go back there

Reasons Left to Live

2010-07-07T01:36:00.000-07:00

~~Haven't seen the LOST finale.~~
Haven't seen Nolan's third Batman movie.
Haven't seen Ireland.

2010-06-24T00:51:00.000-07:00

2010-06-15T04:42:00.000-07:00

some people* ask me "what kind of artist are you?"
and I say "the kind that spills beer on his scanner at 4:43 am on a Monday night" and that's the truth.

*no one asks.

2010-01-25T02:29:00.000-08:00

2011

2010-01-21T02:17:00.000-08:00

I wake up at 7:00 pm. I think one of my roommates is already back from work.
There's some coffee left, and I scoop it into the french press as the kettle boils. I haven't had a job in nearly a year. Not since the census ended last September.
I pour the coffee and climb back upstairs. The house is always freezing since the heater stopped working during the rain storms. I'm never without my hoodie, day or night.
New comics still come out Wednesday, which is today. I open my laptop to see the list. Some of the keys have come off and the screen has a diagonal crack in the lower left which I never fixed, but it's still good for going online.
The only comic I'm interested in this week is the latest issue of Brian K. Vaughan's new series. It has some good characters in it, even if the plot is still slowly building and not much makes sense yet. I click buy, and the online shop automatically subtracts five dollars from my checking account. The comic downloads to my harddrive, and I open it with a free ebook reader. Since comics stopped printing on paper, most fans went with the Apple Tablet, which makes it a little easier to curl up on the sofa with, but I can't afford it. I can barely afford this issue.
Part of my daily routine is to walk to the taco truck down the street for lunch. I wear a jacket over my hoodie and pull a stocking cap over my head. I grab my umbrella and go out the door. It never stops raining these days. It has been a consistent, unending downpour for over six months. Scientists are still trying to understand why.
There used to be stores and restaurants down this street. On the corner was a Target, and beside it was a BBQ place, and next to that was a small, locally owned book store. I have seen them close down one by one since I've walked along this street. The Target has been boarded up, and it's giant parking lot fenced off. The BBQ place and the bookstore have become camp for more and more homeless people who sleep under the doorways and try to stay dry.
The taco truck is one of the few places still in business where you can get a cheap meal. I get the rice and bean burrito as always. Another five dollars spent.
Back home, I eat and check for jobs on craigslist. There is nothing. Not unless you have experience in the medical industry. Or are willing to do porn. These are trades which will never be hurt by the economy.
I am worried. My unemployment benefits ran out months ago and I am surviving off my savings. It won't be long until I am broke.
There is a hundred dollars I keep in an envelope in my desk. When I can no longer pay my rent, I can at least pay for a bus ticket. I am thirty years old and my only hope of survival is to live with my parents.

I Believe in Self Improvement

2010-01-12T02:26:00.000-08:00

I am going to teach myself to ink with a brush, even if it takes years.

the wacom tablet makes a beautiful, fake line. it can pretend to be any tool you like, fine tip or dry. you can load a photo and trace it, even.
for a while it was like standing before the road to hackville and looking down it. I could see myself there.
it made me ill.

but a brush,
a real, physical brush...

I bought a Winsor & Newton Series 7 #000,
the same brush Paul Pope uses.
he says it took him three years to learn it.
I like having a goal. a way to mark improvement.
something that, with diligence, you can master.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ernestborg9/4248127965/

10 from 2009

2010-01-09T02:43:00.000-08:00

10. District 9
09. The Brothers Bloom
08. Inglourious Basterds
07. Drag Me to Hell
06. Star Trek
05. Fantastic Mr. Fox
04. (500) Days of Summer
03. Up in the Air
02. Watchmen
01. A Serious Man

2010-01-07T04:28:00.000-08:00

I own a lot of pens and they're all
on the floor

The Mortician's Apprentice: Chapter One

2009-12-01T23:50:00.000-08:00

Written for National Novel Writing Month

There was a shipwreck at the bottom of the cliff. A great, three-masted merchant ship, tangled in the rocks, turned on its side like a wounded animal. White waves bled from the cracks in its bow and rolled over its sunken sails, indifferent to its presence, as though the mighty vessel, from mainmast to stern, was no longer a ship; it was just another part of the shore.
From his view on top of the hill, the old fisherman could not at first identify what he was seeing, or at least believe it. He looked along the ends of the coast but in the early hours of the morning there was no other person for miles. He was alone with the great shape at the bottom of the cliff, and therefore, he considered, sole inheritor of whatever responsibilities, or possibly treasures, it held. After a long moment of deliberation, the man set down his basket of bait and breakfast, rested his pole over his shoulder, and bit his pipe securely in his teeth. Then he slowly began to climb down the cliff. It was just after sunrise and the shadows were deep and black on the rocks, disguising its drops as safe footing, and the dew was slick under his boots. The man used his fishing pole as a walking stick but his joints were weak and it was more than thirty minutes until he reached the bottom. Freezing waves immediately rushed around his ankles and sprayed his face. There was no going further than where he stood, precariously, on a narrow boulder. A step ahead, the drop-off was sharp and the sea was deep. Beaten, he laid his pole against a rock as tall and jagged as a toppled tree trunk, and lit his pipe despite the strong breeze, and he stared at the fallen ship ten feet away, watching the waves beat against the wreckage and the shreds of sails flap like wet laundry in the wind. The man stood for a long while, unable to look away or turn back. As much as it was an unusual sight, and a spectacular one, it also frightened him. From the burst wall of the bow there was only blackness, like looking into the mouth of a cave. There were no sounds other than the booming surf and the flutter of the sails. No signs of movement or survival. He was looking at a grave.

By eleven o'clock, the police inspector was found and notified of the ship. He was on horseback many miles outside the village, riding towards a sheep farm to discuss a repeated property dispute with the owner. Having never taken a liking to coaches, Inspector William Walden savored these mornings when it was just he and his horse, and how the rhythmic clip clop of hooves on the road seemed to clear his mind and liven his thinking. It had shaped up into a warm, clear day despite the early fall weather, and the first of the fallen leaves had spread golden orange over the valley road. Above all, it was quiet, and Walden, for the first time that week, was able to breathe easy and concentrate on his current casework. That's when he heard his name being called.
It was a young man from the village, the son of a fisherman, if Walden wasn't mistaken, running towards him from across the valley, waving his arms. He was out of breath and his shirt was dark with sweat. Whatever he wanted, Walden was certain that the man had run the entire way from the village. With faint regret, he stopped his horse to wait for his arrival, removing his bowler hat to run a hand through his damp hair, and then setting it back on.
When he at last reached the road, the young man stopped in front of Walden and leaned over, resting his hands on his knees and, without waiting for his breath to return, began telling the inspector, in looping bursts of sentences which repeated the beginning of the story several times, of what his father had found. The inspector waited patiently for him to finish, staring down from his horse and blinking behind glasses as though trying to clear his vision. When he felt it was appropriately his turn to respond, the inspector asked if the young man had seen the shipwreck himself. Walden had no desire to chase after an alleged shipwreck that was, as far as he knew, only the delusion of a senile old man.
The kid insisted that he had. In fact, he exclaimed, he had even ventured inside.
"And what did you find inside?" asked Inspector Walden.
"Dead men, sir," he answered. "It was full of dead men."

A convoy of coach and horses lined the hillside. They moved in somber single file along the rim of the cliff and patiently switch-backed down the embankment to where the land leveled with the sea on a beach of rock. The leader of the group was Inspector Walden, still on horseback, forging what he judged the safest path for his men. He was followed by a coach carrying two constables, peering out through curtains. They in turn were followed by a second coach, which held only the town doctor and his large leather medical bag. Lastly, in back of the line, was a horse-drawn wagon draped solemnly with black velvet curtains, and with two tall, white crosses on either side, pointing up into the sky like horns. Driving the coach was a figure equally draped in black, his head covered by a hood of his robe. The horse that pulled them was, of course, black.
They rode across the pebbled beach, the coaches rumbling and bouncing over the rough ground, until they couldn't go any further. Inspector Walden stopped his horse at the edge of the water and dismounted. The waves crashed in front of him, barking like guard dogs, walling him apart from the sea. A few feet beyond, the spiked claws of rocks reached from the water like stalagmites, and beyond these, maybe twenty feet from where Walden stood, was the ship. The other men stepped out of their coaches to join him, and they stood silently side by side. None of them had ever seen a shipwreck before.
"Can we make it over there?" asked Constable Kirkwood, the roundest of the two. Walden pointed to the tall rocks. "How's your footing, Constable?"
"I'm going to break my neck."
"No you won't. Constable Dunn?" he called out.
A considerably younger and leaner man responded. "Sir?"
"Bring the lanterns, please."

The men crossed the sea, single file, using the spiked rocks as stepping stones. Beneath their feet, the waves foamed like boiling water, flooding what small footing they could manage and threatening to pull them in with the current. Their balance was hindered by the gusting wind and the lopsided weight of the oil lanterns, which they each held in one hand. When they were only a few steps from the ship, Constable Kirkwood, who was second in line, stumbled and fell forward in his attempt to jump to the next rock, and was saved from toppling into the sea only by the rescuing hand of Inspector Walden.
The only one not to cross to the shipwreck was the man in the black hood who stayed on the beach with his horse and wagon. He had not offered to join the others, nor had the others invited him. The fact was that no one in the village ever spoke to the man in the black hood, just as everyone knew that the man in the black hood never spoke to anyone. From the shore, he watched and he waited.

They entered the ship through a splintered hole in the side, torn open from the hull to the deck. It was a cavernous opening of shredded wooden beams and bent iron, and the sea flowed in like a river. Walden went first, holding his lantern above his head, and stepped into the current. It was deeper than he expected, almost to his waist, and the coldness bit straight into his bones and ran up his spine. The inside was dark, making it impossible to see beyond just a few feet, but he walked further ahead, hoping to find dry floor. Behind him the other men followed, splashing, cursing at the freezing water as they entered one by one. Someone lit his lamp and Walden did the same. Flickering orange light covered the surrounding walls, and shadows bled out from behind piles of collapsed tables, overturned chairs, and a mountain of broken shipping crates. It was difficult to tell from the sight of the room, if what they stood on was the floor or a wall.
"Hello?" one of the constables called. His voice echoed from the tall, curving emptiness above them. They listened but heard only the waves outside and the uncomforting creak of shifting wood as though the entire structure was still rocking, or on the verge of collapse.
"This way," Walden said. "Be careful."
Further inside, the ground began to climb above the water. They followed the incline, waving their lanterns in the dark, and as they made their way deeper, the path became a series of obstacles for the men to scale, forcing them to step over chests of drawers, through tangles of ropes and pulleys, and crawl under toppled support beams. The wooden frame of the ship moaned loudly, as though their combined weight had touched a sore spot, and a second later, a booming crash echoed from somewhere not far away.
"Gentleman, I think it's not safe for us to be here," said the doctor. He was standing very close to Walden's side, clutching simultaneously his medical bag and an issued lantern. He was also, by far, the oldest of the group, not to mention the least experienced in adventuring.
"I agree, doctor," Walden said, in a calm and measured voice. While the other men shuffled in circles, spinning their eyes around the room, Walden kept his view strictly ahead. "But we can't leave yet."
"For heaven's sake, why not?"
"There."
Walden pointed with his lantern. They were standing in a narrow, sideways hall lined with doors. In the light of Walden's lamp, beyond an overturned organ and through a broken doorway, the men could see a face. It was low to the ground, laying on one ear, and with a grey, frozen expression that seemed to be both confused and insulted, as though trying to interpret a rude remark in a foreign language. It was bearded and sallow and, above all, unmistakably dead.
Upon seeing this, the two constables immediately made the sign of the cross, while Walden and the doctor knelt forward for a closer view. The dead man was spilled across the floor, his lower body crushed in an avalanche of wood and metal.
"Well, inspector, is this what we came for?" Constable Dunn asked.
Walden looked past the body into the room, but the glow of the lantern showed only piles of debris, as though the entire ceiling had caved in.
"I want to find a reason," Walden said. "I want to know what happened."
"It's a ship wreck, Chief Inspector," Dunn said. "With all due respect, that's all you need to know."
The sound of bending wood returned, as though the ship was siding with the argument to leave. Walden again seemed to ignore this, holding his lantern forward and making slow, careful movements towards a row of stairs at the end of the hall.
"Sir, where are you going?" called Kirkwood.
"There is a smell," he said. "I believe it's coming from down here."
The others watched him from where they were, unsure whether to follow. In all their years of knowing William Walden, the consensus was still in debate over the matter of whether his frequent hunches and intuitions were the result of brilliance, or if he was simply mad.
"You may follow if you like, gentlemen."

What Walden smelled more than anything was fish, salty and pungent, laced in the sea water leaking inside and sweating down the pores of the wood. But under the smell was another, more familiar to him from his years spent in London investigating murder scenes, and it was this smell he followed down the stairway. In the drunk, funhouse geography of the ship, Walden climbed not the steps themselves but the sloped wall to their right, struggling in his wet boots to find a grip, and, at the end of the passage, his lamp light finally revealed the source of the masked odor.
The room was wide, and relative to the other areas they had crossed, fairly undamaged. It held a row of bunk beds, most still standing, and framed on either side by support beams. At the end of the wall nearest to Walden, piled recklessly against the side as though the room had lifted up and poured them across the floor, was a large collection of men. They were a mess of tangled stone limbs and empty eyes, buried one atop the other like an open grave. The pile trailed to the end of the room, and from what he could see in the limited spread of the light, contained at least fifteen bodies. The size and strength of the smell seemed appropriately relative to this number.
"Constables," he called, although his voice rose only enough to be heard in the next room. "I believe I have found something rather remarkable."

Momentarily the group rejoined, and in the combined light of their four lanterns, the gruesome scene was fully revealed. They were surrounded by dead men. Against the wall, along the floor, some lying in their bunks. The inspector's estimate proved only slightly off; the total number was seventeen. Practically the entire crew of the ship.
Constable Dunn whistled.
"Blimey! I've never seen anything like this," he said, standing in the doorway and very consciously not entering the room.
"Let's leave, inspector," Kirkwood said, holding a hand to over his nose and mouth. "Nothing we can do here. This place isn't right."
"I agree," Walden said. He was still staring intently at the pile of bodies. "It's not right."
A low thud of waves banged against the outer wall, punctuating this statement, and the floor seemed to shift under their feet. Walden turned and crossed the room, holding his light to the drawers and upturned desks, leaning closely over scattered nautical equipment.
At the feet of the crewmen, the doctor stooped to one knee and set his lantern down, and with both hands began to gently examine the limbs and bodies of the dead men, raising their arms and rolling them over.
Walden opened the lid of a large trunk and looked inside. "Do you find it strange?" he asked out loud. "That so many of the crew died in this room?"
He paused for a moment to examine a map framed on the wall. It depicted, in dashed lines that curved across the page, routes of travel, trade destinations, and various bodies of water reputed to contain known pirate activity or, judging from the serpent-like illustration, sea monsters.
"A better question, inspector, might be how they died," the doctor said, rising again to his feet. "I can't find wounds on any of these bodies."
The constables looked from each other's raised eyebrows of skepticism to the piles of corpses. But even from a cursory view, it was evident that the crewmen had not, as one would first presume, been crushed, drowned, or impaled to death. The bodies were, despite being piled and buried upon one another, whole. If the cause of death was a shipwreck, as everyone in the room would agree it was, it was only due to the fact that the dead men were in fact aboard a wrecked ship.
"Forgive me for asking, doctor," Dunn said. "But what do you mean?"
"Well, surely there could be any number of explanations. No one here knows what happened aboard this ship to cause it to crash," the doctor said. "But the nature of these bodies. It's as though, well, they were dead prior."

Across the room, Walden shut the lid of the trunk and went to a large wooden cabinet in the corner. He pulled at the door handle but found it was stuck, causing only the cabinet to nudge forward and produce a muffled bang from inside. He stood examining the door in the glow of his lantern, pondering whether it was locked, when he heard a small noise from behind the engraved oak surface that sounded very much like a human cough. It was short and weak like the failed bark of a sick dog, and didn't return. Walden set his lantern on the floor and grasped both knobs of the duel cabinet doors, and tugged with a grunt of force. There was a loud crack and something splintered from the bottom, and the wooden sides pried open enough for Walden to see in. In the sliver of orange light that fell across the darkness, there was a head of human hair, shaggy and course, like that of a young man's. Walden gripped the sides of the opening and pulled. After a second of protest, the cabinet finally swung fully open.
"My word," he said in a tone almost as if he were impressed, either at his skill in police work, or maybe at the sight before him.
It was a boy, no older than a teenager, curled into the tight space of the cabinet, his knees tucked to his head, and his arms folded across him. His clothes were tattered and smeared with black, but he seemed to free of any cuts or bruises. At the bright light of the lantern across from him, the boy's eyes opened and then retreated into a tight squint. His lips were cracked and his breathing was shallow, and in the dust that rose from the splintered wood, the boy sounded another weak cough.
"Doctor, if you would join me please," Walden said. "I have found a survivor."

2009-11-17T20:58:00.000-08:00

Locks

2009-08-04T16:05:00.000-07:00

If I get to work early, somewhere between 8:00 and 8:30, and I'm lucky, I can see the O.C.D. guy.
We reach the parking lot at the same time. He pulls in one row across from me. I shut the engine off and watch. This is the best part of my day.
He gets out of his car and shuts the door. He stands and looks at it. He pulls on the handle. Then he walks around the car, pulling on the handles of the other three doors. He walks away and stops. He looks at his car from five feet away. He looks at it for a long time. I watch him, wondering what he's looking for.
He walks back to his car. He moves his hand along the edge of the hood, as though feeling for dents. He stares at it. He moves to another position and looks at the car from a different angle. Then he walks back and checks the door handles again, one by one.
He walks away. Pauses. Looks back and stares. Just stares.
Sometimes, he'll check the door handles again.
He walks away. Looks back over his shoulder, checking. Like the car has been doing something while his back was turned.
I wait until he's finished and inside the building. Then I get out of my car, hit the remote lock, and walk inside after him.

Obviously 5 Believers Vs. From A Buick 6

2009-08-03T14:26:00.000-07:00

I put Obviously 5 Believers on the jukebox and sat at the bar drinking beer. Andrew sings "la la la put a blanket on my bed."
He says "Is that this song?"
We listen. He sings to the melody: "If I go down, yada yada yada, put a blanket on my bed. What song is that?"
I say "it's this song" because the way it sounds, you can almost hear where those lyrics would be.
We sit, listening, drinking. The lyrics never come and the song ends.
He says "what song is that?"
I say "I don't know. I thought it was that one."

The Silence of Yourself

2009-04-01T05:21:00.000-07:00

you need to listen
to the silence of yourself
to hear everything

Time Poisoning

2009-03-26T20:39:00.000-07:00

A noise wakes him. His roommate leaving for work. The front door slams, the window above his bed rattles. Stupidly, he opens his eyes and looks at his clock.
8:30.
He feels suddenly nauseous and his throat closes. Grabbing the blanket, he pulls it over his head and rolls on his side, curled up in darkness.
He has tasted Morning. And it made him gag.

Ireland

2009-03-25T20:30:00.000-07:00

He left everything in his room as it was, and packed a small suitcase, and went out the door on a gray winter's morning.

He boarded a flight from Los Angeles and sat in the window seat, watching a shapeless milky sky for hours, then stopped in Chicago to change planes, and sat by the window again, and watched the ocean, and ate three small meals, and after eight hours he arrived in Ireland.

He signaled a taxi outside the Dublin airport. It was strangely small and green and driven by a girl with red hair under her cap. He gave her an address and sunk into the backseat and watched the city pass, a bright storybook green.

She drove him out of the city, and past the towns, across the countryside where the hills were freckled with white sheep. Down a switchback road to the empty, jagged cliffs of the seashore. There was a stumpy stone house near the water, old and slightly leaning, isolated on the cliff. It looked abandoned and unstable and haunted. The taxi stopped. He took his suitcase and paid the driver, and she drove away, leaving him alone on the doorstep.

The front was unlocked, and he went in. There was nothing but dark and cold and dust from the floor that made him sneeze. He set his suitcase down and lit the antique oil lamp hanging from the stone ceiling, and sat on the rotted spring mattress and tried to get warm. He could hear the waves outside breaking against the rocks. After a while he slept.

In the morning he took a walk along the shore. The wind was strong and frozen and blew coils of mist around his feet. He kept his hands in his pockets and stared at the waves, black and foamy under the silver sky.

He walked until he came to a small village. There was no sign, and no name for it that he could see. At the end of a row of dark houses was a sleepy tavern with an iron anchor above the entrance. He went inside.

It was dim, lit mostly from a single neon beer sign, and a lonely fiddle tune played softly on a record player, scratching and popping like wood in a campfire. Three old men who looked like they were from another century lifted their heads from their tin cups and stared at him.

As he approached the counter, a bald man with a white wizard's beard met him on the other side. He ordered a pint. It was cold and delicious and tasted like nothing he ever had in the States. He told the bartender he needed goods and asked if he could purchase them there. The bartender agreed. He sold him several cans of food, a petrified loaf of bread, and a virgin bottle of whiskey.

He left the tavern at sunset, carrying the items inside a wicker basket which the bartender had given him. He made his way out of the village along a cobblestone road. As he passed the mill, he noticed he was being followed by a black cat. It followed him over the hill and along the beach, keeping three paces behind him the whole way. It followed him to the stone house and up to the front door.

He asked the cat if it was hungry, and although the cat did not respond, the answer was obvious. He opened the door and let it in. It sat patiently in the center of the room, watching, and he took the bread from the basket and broke the end off. He and the cat ate together, and grew sleepy together, and when the sun set they both laid on the mattress and fell asleep.

In the morning, the cat was still in the house. It sat in the center of the room and looked up at him, waiting, presumably, to be fed.

In the afternoon, after a cold walk on the beach, he sat down at the dilapidated wood table in the corner of the room, and took a pen and a leather journal from his suitcase, and opened the bottle of whiskey, and began to write.

He wrote about a detective who lived in Los Angeles.

When the whiskey bottle was a third finished, and he could not write any more, he closed the journal and slept. The cat curled up with him.

He took another walk in the morning, and thought about the detective in Los Angeles, and what he would write about him that day. He went inside, and opened a can of watery tuna that he shared with the cat, and sat down, and wrote.

The sun set, and he continued to write into the night. A storm blew in from the ocean and the flame went out in the lantern, but he lit it again and continued to write. He drank another third from the whiskey bottle, and wrote some more. When the dawn broke blood red over the ocean, he had finished the story.

He wrote "THE END" and the date, and he closed the journal.

When he awoke again, the cat was hungry. He fed it the last of the tuna and bread. He held the cat for a while on his lap, listening to it purr. It sounded ancient and strong. Then he gently lifted the cat and placed it into the wicker basket.

He carried the cat outside and along the cold shore. He carried it over the hill and into the town. He carried it to the tavern with the anchor over the door, and went inside.

He was merrily greeted by the three old men who looked like they were from another century, and the barkeep. He sat down and ordered a pint. Then he opened the basket and introduced the cat to the barkeep. It stepped on the counter like a tightrope walker. He said it needed a good home. The barkeep seemed to judge the cat for a moment, then smiled and agreed to take it. The cat nuzzled his white wizard beard.

When the evening arrived, he left the tavern empty handed. He walked back over the hill and along the shore to the house. He went inside. The journal was sitting on the table, closed. He left it there, along with the suitcase he had brought, and took the bottle of whiskey, and went outside, closing the door behind him.

There was an old wooden rowboat behind the shack, leaning against the wall like a fallen leaf. It wasn't tied. He grabbed the bow of the boat with one hand, holding the whiskey in the other, and dragged it over the rocks down to the water. He walked into the freezing ocean, pulling the rowboat until it was afloat. Then he got one leg inside and lifted himself in. He sat down on the seat and set the bottle in his lap, and took the oars with both hands and rowed away from land.

Sometimes he would stop rowing to drink the whiskey.

He rowed the boat past the tide and over the waves. He rowed over black, bottomless water. He rowed until the land disappeared.

Eventually, so did he.

How To Avoid Monday

2009-03-23T20:26:00.000-07:00

>Sleep in.

>Eat breakfast after noon.

>Walk into work at 1:30.

//Belated and bearded and w/ thermos of coffee.

>Stay till 10:00.

They call it THE LATE SHIFT.

[It's going to save my life.]

Tenenbaum Fail

2009-03-22T22:05:00.000-07:00

I was Brendan from BRICK.
My friends were Buck from KILL BILL, and a nameless Sheriff creation with a giant foam hat.
We found the Royal Tenenbaums on the street, and posed for a picture with them.
That was over two years ago.

The picture, rather unfairly I feel, has now made it to a FAIL blog.

http://tenenbaumfail.tumblr.com/post/88511831

I always wanted to be a Tenenbaum.

//_STATIC

2009-03-17T22:11:00.000-07:00

>000://_
011[//-00_ _0//1:
>
^
<0000.10101010101://_
00000:0///XX
>
#0101://_011p
>xX-//:00

>

>

>

>

>//:00101_000

>

>//:_ 0

0

Hurm.

2009-02-18T18:18:00.001-08:00

From GameFAQ forum

An Irregularity in the Air

2009-01-28T21:07:00.000-08:00

An irregularity in the air
Like a single strand of blond hair
Collecting parking tickets under brunette clouds

Copy Machine Girl

2009-01-16T18:09:00.000-08:00

Copy Machine Girl, don't look so sad
Watching a thousand duplicates falling neatly into a pile
There is still only one of you

Oh Where Have You Been, My Blue-Eyed Son?

2009-01-12T22:34:00.000-08:00

You know, it's just easier to microblog.

2008-12-24T00:35:00.000-08:00

The Cockroach

2008-12-23T00:45:00.000-08:00

Last week I named the cockroach who lived on the wall in our bathroom.
Tonight I found him dead near the sink.
An apparent suicide.
So long, Harry.

The Wintertime is Coming/ The Windows Are Filled With Frost

2008-12-04T23:40:00.000-08:00

I WENT TO TELL EVERYBODY BUT I COULD NOT GET IT ACROSS

The sun has been gone for weeks. Everything dull and grey and blurred with fog. Cars have their headlights on in the middle of the day. We drive underwater.

We don’t get a real October in Los Angeles. Only glimpses of it, collecting under the right trees, crawling up forgotten walls like snowdrifts. Wind scatters dead leaves across the sidewalk. The ghosts of October. By December the rain has washed them away.

The air is properly cold now. The time has come for jackets. Halloween trains you to wear them again. In the thrift store, picking out pieces of costume. A detective coat or pilot jacket with training wheels. You stuff your hands in the pockets. When the time’s come, you can wear this for real. When October finally arrives in Los Angeles.

It’s late November and the sky goes dark and stays that way. The first rain falls. You dig in the deepest corner of your closet and find your old sports coat, full of promise and a faded receipt in the pocket. A forgotten purchase from nearly one year ago; an anonymous item of $3.73. The ink has run purple and wild and crumpled. Where was I?
Dust off the collar. Stuff your hands in the pockets. Jackets make you complete again. When you walk outside and button it against the wind. Time to scowl again. Grow a beard. Chain-smoke in alleyways with Neil Gaiman.

Don’t get a cold. Did you remember to take your vitamins? Drink your orange juice.
Spread another blanket over the bed. Hide from the draft creeping in from the window. Sleep in your clothes. Go to work wearing the same ones on in the morning. Your face lined with creases from the sheets, your teeth still tasting like beer. Sneezing.
Your misery is visible.

We drive underwater with our headlights on. Scarves and mittens and a Styrofoam cup of hot water they call coffee at the Chinese donut shop. You can see your breath like white cigarette smoke as you cross the street to the office. The sky is dirty photocopy grey, and the sun won’t be out till next season.
There’s Christmas lights in the lobby. December is always early, and October always late.

By the side of the road I found the last shelter of leaves, untouched and piled under their mother’s dead limbs. I sat and had lunch with them. They lifted and shifted with the cold wind, and started to move away. With the other leaves. With the rubber bats and skeleton decorations, taken down and boxed up. Gone again till next year.
Leaving only the scattered few, reluctant ghosts of October.

Oh, Where Have You Been, My Blue-Eyed Son?

2008-12-03T22:00:00.000-08:00

http://flickr.com/photos/drmecha/
http://tonydamato.blogspot.com/2008/12/capn-kirk-mr-spock_03.html

More Funny Signs

2008-11-19T23:31:00.000-08:00

Rorschach's Journal, October 12, 1985

2008-11-16T21:42:00.001-08:00

Corbin Ave

2008-10-13T20:10:00.000-07:00

For Your Consideration

2008-10-08T21:19:00.001-07:00

My email tells me that this photo I took at the Denver airport a few years ago with my old camera has been short-listed for inclusion in the "Schmap Denver Guide," fifth edition.
Strange.
Evidently the Schmap people save on photographers by just browsing Flickr for amateur pictures of Denver. Because the only thing they're giving me for it is the byline.

Currently Reading

2008-09-30T23:52:00.000-07:00

Old Scissors and a Spatula

2008-09-29T20:17:00.000-07:00

I got my hair cut at a place across the street from a donut shop and a liquor store.
She was a big woman, slumped against the register like a tired waitress at a diner down the tracks. She said "how you gonna like it, over medium or scrambled?"
I told her I wanted a trim and she nodded like she had heard of trims, once maybe, somewhere in the city or on TV. She stubbed her cigarette out on her apron. She said "coming up."
She cut my hair like she was peeling the shell off a hard-boiled egg. She was in a clumsy, careless hurry to get to the whites of my head.
After five minutes she served my haircut to me and put her hands on her hips. She said "anything else?"
I looked at the mirror. I looked at her and I looked at my head. I tried to send it back. I said "this isn't what I ordered."
She said "that's the way we serve 'em."
You can't take back a haircut.
You can only bitterly chew, and swallow it down, and leave the tip on the counter before you go.

Eighty Cents Spent at The Dragon Donut

2008-09-24T18:30:00.000-07:00

Translucent coffee, the color of the cream
One grind floats quietly to the top
She hands me back two dimes
It could have been an apology

Iron

2008-09-11T22:53:00.000-07:00

I awoke from sleep on a Saturday afternoon, not knowing if it had been eight hours or twenty-four.
When I peeled myself from the magnetics of the bed and stood up on unsteady legs, I felt wrong. My eyesight bounced in and out like a paddle ball. I was light-headed and, I noticed, making the first steps to the door, incredibly weak.

Appearing in the living room like a tattered survivor of a shipwreck washed on the sands, my roommate looks up from the couch and appraises my appearance.

"You look like a bad special effects make-up job," he tells me.

There are deep red lines under my eyes like bruises. My lids sag heavily, almost completely, over puffed, glassy slivers of my pupils, like a particularly disoriented wino, or a woefully exaggerated prosthetic attempt at one.

"I feel strange," I say.

The world is still bouncing and I'm dizzy standing without holding the wall. Silas, who has likely grown accustomed to my frequent phases of sickness -indeed a coworker once told me that since he had known me (granted only a couple months at this point) he had never known me not to have a cold - gets his shoes on and asks if I'd like to join him thrift store shopping as he attempts to assemble a Joker costume. I shrug.

We drive through the Valley with the windows rolled down, hitting each Good Will and Salvation Army from Van Nuys to San Fernando. I'm bleary eyed and dragging through each one like legs in drying cement, and I try using walls and counters and clothing racks as guardrails against falling to the floor.

Silas is having poor luck, to no surprise, finding a knee-length purple overcoat, and we leave each store checking the map for the next one. Somewhere on his itinerary, whose exact length and destinations are kept a mystery, is The Grand Daddy of Thrift Stores, a fabled behemoth somewhere on the outskirts of the Valley, whose size, or so it has been told, is that of a palace. The exact location of this thrift store paradise is unknown, and I lay back in the passenger seat, watching an unfamiliar third-world neighborhood pass outside the window, relying, somewhat irritably, on Silas's questionable intuitive mental compass.

Finally we pass a set of train tracks - the one vague and cryptic clue we were given as to its location - and there on the right, through a foreboding wire fence, is a giant white brick building, bland and windowless like a derelict prison, with dull painted letters announcing it to be, plainly, the "Valley Thrift Store".

The inside is not so much a palace as it is a very large warehouse, cement floors and exposed ceiling, bright stadium lights, and cluttered with endless racks and shelves like a flea market inside a forgotten construction site. I'm limping and quickly lose pace with Silas, left adrift in the crowded waters, close to drowning. The fatigue that's overtaken me is almost supernatural in its totality. I wonder, at this point, if I'll faint or something in the store, and tell myself, reassuringly, that Silas will no doubt drive me to a hospital if so.
There's no place to sit down that I can see, aside from a wooden rocking chair at the front of the switchback checkout line which, intermittently, is occupied by an overweight and angry looking woman who I presume to be security, so I float, like a jettisoned astronaut, through the length of the store. Over the speakers, muffled slightly but still audible, begins Elton John's "Rocket Man," and as I drift through the crowd, I can't help but admire the surrealism of the scene. The commitment and violence with which the shoppers tear through the racks of clothes, as greedy and mindless as zombies.

We're stopped at a gas station, I remember.
Silas asks if I'd like to go inside and get a giant cheap drink, the forty-four ounce plastic bucket of mix and match flavors from the soda fountain for just 79 cents, which has somehow become a regular thing with us at gas stations, and I admit to him that I still feel sick. "Lightheaded," I tell him.
Silas, concerned for the first time likely due to me not, for the first time, getting a giant cheap drink, offers a diagnosis. It could be, he says, a lack of iron.
Which makes sense in a way. I think of my mom's iron deficiency, and the likelihood of its hereditary migration onto myself, and agree with the diagnosis. This is exactly the kind of shit that happens to me.

Silas prescribes iron, available at your nearest CVS, and I ask him politely to stop on the way back. In the store, from half an aisle of vitamins, I select a white bottle, the size of a baby food jar, which clearly and rather generically states, in red capitol letters: IRON. When I rattle the bottle, it sounds like a lifetime supply.
For the rest of the day and the next I wonder if I have anemia. I try reading articles on the internet, but my attention span allows for just a glance at one of the comics on my floor and wonder: what other titles does Tommy Lee Edwards draw, or exactly what in the fuck is a Batman of Zur-En-Arrh, and I click google.
The next night, sitting in Denny's with friends, Alex tells me, as you would tell an idiot that he cannot fly, that I cannot have anemia because that would mean my insides are bleeding. Most of the time, Alex makes stuff up. But for some reason I always agree with him.

The consensus, in any case, and my decision, was to see a doctor. I was ready to call in the next day, when my throat swelled up and I could no longer swallow food or liquid or even my own saliva.

I see the doctor at the earliest appointment time available.
She's just a nurse, nearly my age, and she holds my tongue down with a popsicle stick and asks me to say aw, and I feel like a little kid. She looks inside my throat with just a second's glance before telling me, with a pity in her voice whose sincerity is only later questioned, that I have strep.
She writes a prescription for antibiotics and Vicodin, and I spend the next week away from work, watching movies in my underwear, doping myself on pills, and trying my best to speak with a hoarse Kermit the Frog voice into drive-thru mics to order milkshakes.

The strep throat passes.
The strange one-day bought of intense fatigue never returns.
The bottle of iron remains on my desk, in the corner, mostly untouched.

After Hours in a Los Angeles Office

2008-09-04T21:05:00.001-07:00

Heart of ScreenLand

2008-09-03T21:24:00.000-07:00

The last of the sunlight is bright gold across the tips of roofs and the tallest palm trees, while the shadows swim up and cover the whole city a deep royal blue. I watch it happen as I sit outside, drinking coffee and enjoying the company. The neon lights flicker on, a strange alien green, like small electric fires throughout the nostalgic Golden Age Hollywood architecture, and the sunset behind them is a contrasting pink and purple. I think: I wish I brought my camera.
I miss Culver City.

Things I Drew for Money

2008-08-28T20:58:00.000-07:00

Since I'm being good and paid for it finally, I'm going to start posting the Rama illustrations I did back in June.

Or maybe just the ones I like.

THE INVENTION CHRONICLES

Bottom of the Sea

2008-08-21T22:51:00.000-07:00

(Frozen) Waffles and Wine

2008-08-13T23:09:00.001-07:00

Is that depressing?
It certainly feels like it is.

Owl Ship

2008-08-05T22:21:00.000-07:00

How This Will End

2008-07-15T15:24:00.000-07:00

Giving Up
is buying a new pair of shoes
because your old ones vanished without a trace
and despite all the movies you've seen,
and the characters you play in your head,
you are not a detective
and cannot find your shoes
in your own apartment.
And neither can the real detective
who you can't afford to hire
and who doesn't exist anyway
and who wouldn't take such a ridiculous case even if he did.

The 101 Coffeeshop

2008-07-09T19:54:00.000-07:00

100-Degree Monday Morning

2008-07-07T11:24:00.000-07:00

I couldn't find my shoes this morning.
Not in the pile by my bed, or by my desk. Nowhere in this pile of apartment.

I think everything that had been collecting over the past weeks was scooped up by the weekend. And held in a jar and shaken around. And the weekend poured it all back out. All over the apartment. Everything upside down and backwards.

I woke up in the sun, and the room was filled with steam rising off the floor. Some tropical flowers growing out of the laundry. A 100-degree Monday morning.
Green stains on the shower tile from when the Hulk last used it.
New wildlife, roaming free under my feet. Dogs and cats and melting chinchillas.

I dressed myself in a shirt I didn't recognize - probably last used as a Halloween costume - awkwardly stuffed into my jeans. But I couldn't find my shoes.
I jumped piles back and forth from one room to the next before grabbing a pair of squashed brown sneakers by the front door. Some roommate's. Or a stranger's, possibly forgotten or abandoned or blown in by the wind through the always-open sliding glass door.

We've lived through weeks of amounting wreckage.
Only now does it feel like we have time at last to fix it.
And find lost shoes.
Like a needle in an avalanche.

I'm Finished

2008-07-01T15:31:00.000-07:00

There was a collection of empty styrofoam coffee cups from the 24-hour donut place down the street. And the empty Red Bulls. And Starbucks Double Shots. They still shown in the streetlamps when I turned the light off and went to bed at four in the morning.

Stepping over the pile of loose papers on the floor. Scraped designs, and sketches, and false starts.
I let a beard grow towards the end. Which my coworkers heckled and asked if I lost a bet.
It doesn't mean much to me in my three-hours-of-sleep head.

My relationship took a slight beating. Days and nights I couldn't be there.
And the sinking disappointment I felt when they told me I had to re-do two drawings from scratch.

But I finished the illustration gig.
Ten full-color pieces delivered by email. One at a time.
Maybe you'll see them some day.

Nighthawks

2008-06-30T23:21:00.001-07:00

At the Mr. Brainwash art show.
http://www.artshow2008.com/beautiful.html

Jewl City Diner

2008-06-26T18:39:00.000-07:00

Some Real Conversation for Your Ass

2008-06-16T10:42:00.000-07:00

I was in a grocery store the other day, and overheard a man on his cell phone. He says, in a reassuring manner:

"It's not that she's unattractive. But she is a hooker."
Pause.
"And she's a fucked up bitch."

Something About Old Memories/Lost Photos

2008-06-08T21:15:00.000-07:00

I lost my camera sometime between a Renaissance Faire and waking up in a girl’s apartment.
I have no memory of exactly when.

Only that it was a long, strange day of being in the hot sun, and drinking a lot of beer, laughing at people in costumes, and eating a questionable turkey leg. And when I finally made it to the backseat of my friend’s car, exhausted and a bit drunk and starting to feel sick, my friend urged me to dissolve a Magic Grow Capsule* in my mouth.
And I did, and got a butterfly.
And it just made me sicker.

So later, when we stopped at In-N-Out Burger, it was, in retrospect, a mistake to order the fries and shake. Soon I was sick to the point that I couldn’t quite think clearly. Just sat and nodded and tried to keep my eyes open.
The memory starts to fade here a bit, like a blackout. I can’t really account for whether or not I still had the camera on me at this point. It’s possible I left it on the table of the restaurant.
We went to a party straight after, despite my want to just curl up somewhere and sleep. And I remember being in a liquor store and shrugging my shoulders when my friends asked what kind of vodka we should bring to the party.
I remember the house. A small, crowded kitchen. A birthday cake I think I nearly sat on twice. Not talking, not touching my red plastic cup of vodka and cranberry. As soon as a spot opened on the couch I collapsed. Absent-mindedly watching people play Wii.

The night ended at a girl's apartment, where I can almost recall an image of my hand setting my camera down on her bookshelf. Maybe not. But in the morning - once I went back to my friend’s and drove my roommate’s car back to my apartment, and took a nap – the next time I looked for my camera, it wasn’t there.
And I tried to think where it could have gone, but my memory of the weekend was disabled by a fog of sickness. There were too many possible places it could be, and despite my looking in all the ones I could, it didn’t turn up.

If you lose your camera, do you lose your memories along with it?

As time passed, I still didn’t find it.
And didn’t find it.
And didn’t find it.
Until I finally decided, reluctantly, that it would never be found.
And that’s when I thought maybe it was for the best. Because that camera, to be fair, was a piece of shit. And now I could buy something great.

So Amazon that week had a sale on a Canon Powershot SD1100-IS.
I bought it with free shipping, and it came three days early.
Expect lots of pictures, mostly of buildings, to be posted for the next month or two.

* http://www.hobbylinc.com/htm/jri/jri305.htm

Working Artist

2008-06-06T09:49:00.000-07:00

The improbable happened again. I've been hired to draw pictures.

Not storyboards this time, but illustrations - eight of them - to be featured onscreen in a children's movie, under some narration.

I was a bit worried that I've gotten rusty lately. My day job and friends and a new relationship have all diverted me from time spent drawing. Even my sketch blog, at one time going pretty steady, has sat un-updated for more than a month. (And I know everyone has been waiting to see me draw Speed Racer and Indiana Jones. Right?)
But on the night before the roughs were due, I sat down at my desk, very last minute, and sketched until 4 a.m. with pencil and pen and a very liberal heaping of brush marker, and was happy to see that they came out okay.
I scanned them into my laptop and took it to work in the morning, and, when no one in the office was looking, used Photoshop to clean them up a bit, and emailed them in. This, I guess, is how you juggle your day job with your creative one.

So now I'm underway doing the real things. It seems impossible so far to work during the weekend, which means more late nights to come. More messy hair in the morning, and bloodshot eyes, and money spent at Starbucks.
But the trade-off - the satisfaction felt when I sit in an office I'm sure I don't belong at, and can say, with a little more conviction, this may not be the end after all - is worth it.

There's Something Happening Here But You Don't Know What It Is

2008-05-23T13:13:00.000-07:00

Do You, MR. JONES

Not very long ago I read a screenplay online called "Indiana Jones and the Saucer Men from Mars".
It was another unproduced Indy script, one of the very many, this one written by Jeb Stuart way back in 1995.

In this go, it's the late fifties - the Cold War - and Indy is appropriately pitted against the Russians. They’re after something tied to the Roswell crash, and so Indy spends a lot of time in Area 51, shooting across the desert in a rocket sled, and accidentally wandering into a nuclear testing site – an artificial suburb with plastic furniture and mannequins – and, yeah, jumps into a refrigerator to survive an atomic explosion.
And then he fights saucer men.
Basically, I thought, the script sucked. It was a neat idea for a setting, in the same true-to-the-era way that made the thirties pulp nonsense of Temple of Doom so fun, but. It just wasn’t Indiana Jones.

I felt the same way after seeing the movie opening night.

After twenty years of scripts and rewrites and new writers, Lucas had gotten his way. He got his saucer men. They added the crystal skull, and some Mayan temples (thank god) and his long lost son. But it was more or less that same disappointing script from 1995.

We came to the midnight show, each of us dressed as Indiana Jones or something very close to it. The line stretched around the theater. The energy was intense. One guy in the crowd pulled out a small brass trumpet and suddenly started to play. The first few notes of the Indiana Jones theme spilled out, shaky but still recognizable. Everyone in the crowd jumped and went silent - turning around to watch. Listening. The trumpeter paused, not sure of himself, but his friends urged him to continue.
He took a breath and played. The theme was crude and broken, like a fan-made popsicle-stick sculpture, ready to collapse, but it was still the Indy theme. It rang, shrilly, over the crowd and at the end, they applauded. The excitement and expectations and love was too strong.

I don't blame George Lucas. Not like most people seem to. In a way, I can see how a fifties atomic age/flying saucer theme is fitting for Indy. If you do it well. And, to his credit, he found a factual, archaeological legend that ties into extraterrestrials.
Who I really blame is Spielberg. His work was sloppy and lazy. It felt like he phoned it in every step of the way. Not an inch of the inventive and joyful camera-play from the originals to be found. No ridiculously giant shadows thrown on the wall, or overly dynamic comic book framing. Where in Raiders he used real actors on real vehicles in real locations for the jeep chase, here he settles for amazingly bad greenscreen effects. I can't believe it, but this is his worst movie since The Lost World.

It's so, so sad that we waited twenty years for this.

The energy in the crowd was gone when we left the theater. The trumpet's pathetic rendition of the Indy theme now seemed sadly appropriate. Crossing the parking lot, shaking off our hats and walking to the car with all the other fans. Thinking there were many Indys at the theater. But all we ever saw that night were fakes.

All He Seems Capable of Thinking About is Automobile Racing

2008-05-20T16:58:00.000-07:00

So this happened.
And I ate it up like Chim-Chim with a Pixie Stick.

Yes

2008-05-15T12:47:00.000-07:00

I'm pleased to announce that in a race across the tiled floor of the office supply room, the Mach 5 beats Shia LeBeouf every time.

If You Haven't Seen Speed Racer Yet, You're A Jerk

2008-05-14T09:34:00.000-07:00

Don't listen to the critics, or the Too Cool For The Room douchebags. I'm discovering that everyone who actually sees the movie loves it.
It hurts me that it Speed Racer came in third place. It's not right, and it's just not what it deserves.
This is an amazing movie and it needs your support.
Thank you.

Lincoln County Road or Armageddon?

2008-04-24T14:48:00.000-07:00

(Can You Tell Me Where We're Heading?)

One in the afternoon, I wake up. The sunlight's now directly on my face.
I'm sweating under the blankets and I strip them off and turn on my side and fall back asleep for another hour.
Two o'clock now. Nearly two-thirty. In my underwear, in the kitchen, I pour a glass of water. Out the window, traffic moves back and forth like buzzing flies. I can see the freeway on-ramp from here. A non-stop assembly line of purpose. People waiting to go where they need to go.
I wash my face in the bathroom, try to shake the sleep out of my head. My eyes are bloodshot, watery and puffy. Ten hours sleep looks like this.
Three o'clock now. The guilt starts to come in. The feeling of another wasted day, and I vow to do something productive this time. Not like yesterday. Or the day before. Today will be different. As soon as I have my coffee.

I've been following the same routine for weeks. I get on my shoes. The same dirty t-shirt. And I walk to the donut place down the street. I'm here every day about this time. The guy who works here sees me and smiles and starts pouring a large coffee before I'm even at the counter.
"Where are your friends?" he asks me in his thick Asian accent.
I tell him they're working. It is, after all, Wednesday afternoon. The small TV by the register is showing a daytime talk show.
"Oh," he says. "Are you painting today?"
Some time ago, I told him I stayed home and did graphic design and drew storyboards. To help communicate, I pantomimed drawing in the air. He took this as painting.
I tell him yes, and he laughs a little, like he knows exactly what the truth is. And I guess he can see it in my messy hair and clothes and red eyes. The look of someone who just got out of bed.
I get a donut also and pay my two bucks, which includes the change I throw in the tip jar, and say bye and leave. Off to paint. As though I have a smock and an easel waiting at home. And I grin at the idea of a world in which this is a profession like some people are Police or Doctors or Donut Shop Men. Others are Artists.

I sit at my desk, sip coffee, check email. Facebook. Blogs. Movie news websites.
Finish the coffee and add the Styrofoam cup to the pile of Styrofoam cups in my wastebasket. I chew on the small plastic stir straw.
I should start working now. It's nearly five o'clock. I should open Photoshop and start the design for the next t-shirt that I should have finished last weekend. There are people waiting on me. Promises to keep. I should start working, but I decide to take a shower first.
I finally wash the sweat off me. It's hot in the apartment. The sun has baked every room. The heat makes you lazy, but too uncomfortable to nap. Like Dylan says. "It's too hot to sleep. The time is running away."
Five thirty. Hungry now. I make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Eat it while watching a downloaded episode of The Wire. By the time it's finished, my roommates are back from work. I've done nothing with the day. I tell myself I'll work tonight. Late. When everyone's asleep. But I never do.

Four weeks pass.

I get back from lunch.
It's a relaxed Wednesday afternoon in the office. The phones and keyboards are quiet. People just stand and talk to each other.
I sit down beside my coworker who yawns and tells me he's tired.
"Too bad the breakroom stops serving coffee after noon," I joke.
He perks ups and reminds me he has a card for a free coffee at Starbucks. It's good until the end of May, but only on Wednesdays. He pulls it out of his pocket and hands it to me.
"But bring it back," he says.
I tell him my lunch is over.
"Just go," he says.
A Wednesday afternoon in a coffee shop, and I blend in with the other office workers. Shirts and khakis and black shoes. I move up to the counter. Like a charm, the card grants me a free small coffee. I also get a zucchini walnut muffin, my favorite muffin in the world, and tip the girl at the counter. She's not quite as cool as the Donut Shop Man, but she'll do.
I drive back to the office. It's been a great day, I realize. Blue sky. On the radio, Dylan seems to agree. "Whoo-we, we're gonna fly. Down into the easy chair."

I return the Magic Starbucks Card to my coworker, and sit back at my desk. There's not much to get done, so I spend the rest of the afternoon reading the script to Indiana Jones and the Saucer Men from Mars. I look at the clock. I should start working now, but I don't.
At five o'clock I get in my car with that familiar sort of guilt. I realize what it is. I've done nothing with the day.

It's a good job for now.
It's something that lets me work on other things in the meanwhile.
Something to pay me.
Something to do.

Gallery 1988

2008-04-17T11:15:00.000-07:00

Jesse Riggle is an artist who lives in New York.
I've been good friends with him since the forth grade. And, if memory serves, I was the one who got him into drawing in the first place.
Now he has a painting hanging in a gallery here in Los Angeles.

He wasn't able to make the trip and see it, unfortunately, so I went Saturday afternoon to check it out.
Gallery 1988 features paintings and sculptures based on toys from the eighties. He-Man, Hot Wheels, Gumby, and one particularly amazing Care Bears piece. Jesse did a M.U.S.C.L.E. Men painting.
You can see all the details, and his process, here:
http://jesseriggle.com/projects/?p=129

The gallery is on Melrose and LaBrea, the heart of the Hollywood art district, just next door to Golden Apple Comics, my vote for best comic store in LA. Fans of pop culture would do well to visit.

"First Day On the Job. Know What I Learned?

2008-03-31T17:57:00.001-07:00

How to spot a murderer."

Just Nod If You Can Hear Me

2008-03-27T00:25:00.000-07:00

The signal left sometime Friday, I think. We waited for it to come back.
After all, we’ve been stealing internet with the signal since the day we moved in and we’re used to it disappearing on occasion. It always comes back. Usually in a day or two.
We don’t know who owns the signal, but we’ve often guessed. Either the apartment below us, or the one to our left. We’re not sure. It comes in nice and strong and fast and there have never been any snags or complaints or reason to stop using it.
When it didn’t come back Monday, we wondered whether the owner went on vacation and turned it off. We hadn’t seen the neighbor to the left, and there is that pile of packages by their door. Then again, the people below us had been unusually quiet. Until they invited us down for drinks and a game of darts Easter day.
My roommate and I get in our cars and drive around the block, searching for a free signal. We park our cars in front of houses and use our laptops to check our email. It gets hot in the car. One day my roommate sits on a stranger’s lawn and is told to leave by the owner. I’m a little more cautious. I’ve found a spot not too far from our apartment where I can park alongside a business, some auto parts store I think, and pick up the signal in the house across the street. I’m there in the early morning, in the dark, the glow of the monitor lighting up my face like a floating head. The signal is called DaGirlzFem, and to them I say thanks. Someday we’ll get a router.
The neighbor to the left came back yesterday. We saw her enter her apartment. Now we’re fairly sure we’ve used the mysterious free signal all we’re ever going to. There’s no other explanation. It’s never coming back.
It’s lonely down here, inside this deep black hole. We can barely make out the light up top. If you receive this letter, please send news from the outside world. And tell them, with luck, we’ll be with them again someday.

Leftover Guinness and a Stolen Bottle of Jameson

2008-03-19T19:58:00.000-07:00

Are what remains of St. Patrick's Day.

Not any great memories. But at least enough booze to keep drinking through next week.
Cheers.

Getting light outside, the temperature dropped

2008-03-03T19:32:00.001-08:00

I think the rain has stopped.

10 From 2007

2008-02-28T01:26:00.000-08:00

So this may be the first time my favorite movie of the year won best picture at the Academy Awards. Normally I favor things the Oscars don't. Brick last year, and Sin City the year before that.
But the Coen Brothers have been my favorite filmmakers for a very, very long time, and I have never been more happy for them.

Since I never posted it, here's my Favorites List for 2007, originally compiled months ago.

Favorite Movies of 2007:

10. Ocean's 13
This, not Spider-Man, not Harry Potter, was the best movie of the summer, I was surprised to find.
Smart, visually fantastic, and just thoroughly enjoyable.

09. Eastern Promises
While not as great as A History of Violence, Cronenberg and Mortensen continue to make sharp, perfect thrillers.

08. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
I love westerns. And it's great to see the genre toyed with. This was a little like a Robert Altman film, and a lot like Terrence Malick, but man, was it effective.

07. The Lookout
It's not brilliant, but it's so well done. Like a quick, mean short story found forgotten in a yellowed collection of old pulp crime books. I admit, I'm a sucker for that stuff.

06. King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
The funniest movie of the year. All the better because it's non-fiction.
I was lucky to have the chance to meet the director, producer, and Steve Wiebe himself. But now I'm bragging.

05. Zodiac
An astonishing attention to detail. A slick, gothic eye. A police procedure that lets you feel as exhausted and frustrated as the cops, but never ceases to be engaging. A perfect movie.

04. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Along with the Coens, another great director made an impressive comeback this year.
This was Burton's best movie since Sleepy Hollow. It feels very good to have him back.

03. I'm Not There
The perfect way to make a movie about someone who can't be easily described. Rather than strip him down to the same rockstar biopic formula, Todd Haynes blows him up to mythic proportions. The details, the clues, the ironies, are layered thick, leaving time and multiple viewings to investigate and unwrap it.

02. There Will Be Blood
It's epic and subtle. Beautiful and horrific. The themes (church, business, fatherhood) stay buried underground (Anderson has said his main goal was to tell the story, not a message) until the very end when it all sprays out like a geiser.
P.T. Anderson keeps reinventing himself with better and better movies. I'm more interested than ever what he'll do next.

01. No Country for Old Men
I'm biased. But the Coen Brothers are brilliant. And after their last two movies, it's amazing to see them go back to where they began with a dark, serious crime movie. A comment on them and their films themselves.
While it's arguably not their best ever (Barton Fink and The Big Lebowski, to me, hold that honor), it's a work of careful skill and genius. When was the last time (only time?) a film was this moving and intense without a score to influence the viewer?
Cormac McCarthy, it should be noted as well, is everywhere in this movie, and is largely responsible for it being so amazing.

Most Disappointing Movies of 2007:

10. The Invasion
Because the trailer led me to think this was going to be really good.

09. You Kill Me
Because John Dahl used to be amazing.

08. Shoot 'Em Up
Because a long time ago I read about the writer/director's vision for this, and it sounded brilliant.

07. Live Free Or Die Hard
They don't make 'em like they used to.

06. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
I loved the first two movies, dammit.

05. The Simpsons Movie
Because every fan was disappointed with this one.

04. Stardust
I remember telling people who hadn't read a single Neil Gaiman book "just wait till they start adapting them into movies. Then you'll see what I mean".
They still don't.

03. Spider-Man 3
I've since grown to really like this movie on DVD, but it still doesn't make up for the fact that this was a huge step down from the perfection of the second film. When it should have raised the bar even higher, it just collapsed under its excess.

02. The Darjeeling Limited
Wes Anderson is one of my favorite filmmakers today. Watching him stumble with this felt like getting punched in the stomach. I think he got sidetracked, with lots of passion but no script. He should take a break or go in a different direction before it becomes obvious that he's out of ideas.

01. Grindhouse
Speaking of favorite filmmakers who made a bad movie this year...
Both Rodriguez and Tarantino were posed to make a great b-movie genre film. Instead, Rodriguez turned in a silly parody, and Tarantino showed that he's lost his skill at dialogue and pacing. Still, I hope they get a chance to try another.

Honorable Mention:
05. 3:10 to Yuma
04. Superbad
03. Ratatouille
02. Lucky You
01. Black Book

I'm Sorry I Missed:
05. Sunshine
04. Michael Clayton
03. Youth Without Youth
02. Gone Baby Gone
01. Lust, Caution

Back for an All New Season

2008-02-07T16:58:00.000-08:00

“The Invention Chronicles” used to be the place where I put drawings on the Internet. And for a while, it was nice.
Then I slowed down.
Then I put up nothing but bad drawings.
Then I stopped altogether.
Then, one day, I deleted the whole thing from existence.

Time passed.

Now I’ve brought it back.

The slate’s been wiped clean; it’s a fresh start. I feel good.
New things always look promising.

tonydamato.blogspot.com

It's Noir Out

2008-01-24T17:36:00.000-08:00

Based on True Events

My phone woke me at two-thirty in the afternoon.
I was asleep on the floor, a thin blanket almost spread over me. I don’t have a bed. I don’t have a job either. These days, I don’t have much.
Gray light seeped through the blinds, the soft drum of rain of the window. The phone rang again.
“Yeah,” I said, stretching my back and yawning, so that I sounded more like a wounded animal than a human.
It was So-and-So. He needed me downtown. Told me to bring the case. I told him I would be there in an hour.
I thumbed open the bottle of Vicodin I got recently from the dentist and swallowed one with tap water. My tooth hurt, maybe.

I threw on my jacket and left the apartment. It was like stepping into a monsoon. Rain fell in buckets. It flooded the walkway, blew sideways in the wind. Made a little waterfall out of the rain-gutter, pouring thick on the top staircase and flowing down each lower step like a fountain. I had to either walk through this deathtrap or shimmy down the railing, so I took my time and stepped carefully and came out the other end like a man through a car wash.
My landlady was on the other side, arms folded, watching the rainfall from the cover of the raised walkway. I nodded and kept going and prayed she wouldn’t stop me.

My car was a wreck, a ruin in a junkyard, less than half of it working. One window stayed up; the others just let in blown leaves and rain to soak the seats. Its back had been demolished by a senile old driver a few weeks back, leaving me with one functioning tail light that I have to duct tape in place, and a jagged hole for the other that still occasionally leaked shards of glass. The entire back mangled, the trunk doesn’t shut; just bobs up when the car hits a bump, and falls back down if I’m lucky. The old guy’s insurance company got tired of me calling every day, and learned my number. Now the machine tells me they’re at lunch, even when it’s seven AM.

The car started at least, and I hit the wipers. I don’t have a radio; it was stolen years ago. Now I just listen to me talk aloud about how much I hate myself.
No gas in the tank, either. These days, I don’t have much.
At the station I pumped in ten bucks, standing in the rain, staring at the fuel counter, feeling hungry. There was an ad posted on the pump: A cup of coffee and a muffin for two bucks. I left my car and walked inside. Out of five different choices, the only coffee they had left was French Vanilla, those bastards. I stirred in some sugar and powdered creamer, and picked out one of the last misshapen shrink-wrapped blueberry muffins, and paid my dollar ninety-nine with a debit card.

I was in the slow line of cars crawling towards the freeway entrance, sipping coffee and watching the wipers move the rain around, when I noticed I forgot to bring the case.
“Shit,” I said, and swerved out of the lane.
I drove to where I could turn around, and spun the wheel. On the passenger seat, my muffin tumbled across the car and landed somewhere between the seat and door on the far side.
“Muffin!” I called to it, reaching my body across the seats.
The car swerved slightly; someone honked. With one hand, I held the wheel; with the other I fingered the muffin and brushed the dirt off with my jacket.

Five minutes later I parked in a small lake of rainwater outside the apartment, and ran through the untamed jungle at the center of the complex, causing birds to screech and flutter.
Inside, on the ground by my kitchen, was a small pile of cases and bags and chords of all sizes. I got out my phone and called So-and-So.
“Which one?” I said.
He said all of them.
I spent a lot of time figuring out how to arrange everything on my body. I stuffed my pockets with the smaller bits, both jacket and jeans, and slung two different carrying straps around my shoulder. In either hand I held the handles of multiple cases.
Waddling back into the rain, I kicked the door shut behind me then realized I didn’t know which pocket my keys were in. I had to strip everything off and search my pockets one by one. It was, of course, in the last one I checked.
Down through the fountain stairs again. Past my landlady again. Her eyes narrowing with suspicion.
Weighted down like a pack mule, I limped back to my car, giving the rain a nice long time to soak every inch of me. My foot sank into the small lake I parked in, and I stripped the things off me again and threw them in the backseat to be rained on through the opening in the windows. Then I made my way back to the freeway.

The coffee had gone mostly cold. I popped another Vicodin and swallowed it down with the last of the drops from the Styrofoam cup, tipping it back, cringing at the freezing taste.
To no surprise, there was an accident on the 405. It happens once a day. It’s to be expected. The traffic crawled, occasionally coming to full stops. I didn’t mind. It gave me a chance to take my hands off the wheel and use them to pry the last of the muffin out of its cupcake wrapper.
Thirty minutes later we passed the accident; two lanes blocked off for a truck lying sideways in a pile of glass, and a cop car with two cops outside talking. All the passing cars idling by to stare at nothing.

My phone rang. Tiny little bagpipes droning out Scotland the Brave.
“Yeah,” I said.
So-and-So, wanting to know where I was.
“There’s an accident again,” I told him. “I’ll see you twenty minutes.”
But twenty minutes later it was five o’clock and I was in the business district. All the tall buildings on both sides of every street all evacuating at once. Every worker from every office on every floor, every building, all getting in their separate cars and onto the road. The street flooded.
The rain didn’t help either. Californians drive like shit in the rain.
My phone rang again.
Now So-and-So’s boss was getting impatient.
“Sit tight,” I said. “I’ll see you in twenty minutes.”
“That’s what you said twenty minutes ago.”
“Fine,” I said. “Nineteen.”

The sky turned dark and everyone’s headlights came on, glowing yellow blobs, their reflection distorted in the wet street. The red of stop lights and tail lights, bleeding together. The deep drumming of rain on the car roof. The sleepy swish of the wipers.
It’s blues weather. If I had a radio I’d listen to Miles Davis.

So-and-So back on the phone.
“Where are you?” he said.
“Parking,” I said. “Come out and help me carry this stuff.”
We move it inside a warm, dry room. Everyone standing around, waiting for me.

My part was done so I left after a while. Walked out the back, through the alley.
The rain soaked through my clothes. I don’t have an umbrella. These days, I don’t have much.
I watched my shadow move across the bricks, float over the puddles. The rain makes bullet holes in its reflection.
Rainy nights like these in LA. With the wind moving the silhouette palm trees, and the neon lights flashing in the black gutters.
If you’re leaving your house, remember your raincoat.
It’s noir out.

Here, at the Kauai Surf

2008-01-19T02:15:00.001-08:00

Here at The Kauai Surf, the apartments circle an untamed jungle like hidden ruins.
Raised walkways criss-cross the dense foliage.
Somewhere, the call of a tropical bird.
The drums of a lost native civilization.

We're still moving in.
There's no couch, no TV.
I'm sleeping on the floor each night.
Our internet's hooked up, and the fridge is next.
It's empty and white and clean, and the carpet smells like soap.
I'm slowly meeting the neighbors.
Slowly venturing out in the new town.

Here's my new digs.
Here, I lay my hat in my home.
Here, at The Kauai Surf.

A Bargain

2008-01-07T22:29:00.001-08:00

Temporary Men

2008-01-02T22:36:00.000-08:00

A Short Story

On a cold morning, the office is nearly lifeless. A slow tapping of a keyboard somewhere in the quiet space. A muted chirp of the phone. Overhead lights that seem somehow too bright.
The boss shows the new temp where he’ll be sitting.
“What did you do before this?” she asks, politely.
He says, “I was an inventor.”
He adjusts his glasses slightly, a bit self-conscious.
“Really?” she asks. "What kind?"
“Do you know the toaster that sings to you when your toast pops up?”
She says she does not.
He tells her that that was his. They sold it in gadget catalogues. The kind tucked into seat pockets in airplanes.
She says, “Why aren’t you out inventing things anymore?”
He shrugs. His look says that he’s run out of ideas.
She leaves silently, and he sighs, and begins to file the sheets of paper into folders and the folders into cabinets, like he was told.

An hour passes. He grows weary. He closes one drawer, picks up another file, but as he looks for the next drawer, a thought comes to him. He wonders if this could be somehow easier. Or faster. He wonders what if the cabinets were in some way connected, or condensed, into an easily navigated system? What if a tool could move the file into a drawer for you? An automated arm, working with a system of automated file cabinets!
He stands and thinks for several minutes, staring at the wall of drawers, head spinning. He’s still standing in place ten minutes later when the boss walks in to check on him.
She tells him, knocking on the stacks of boxes, he needs to concentrate on his work.
She tells him to consider this a verbal warning.
Embarrassed, he apologizes and pulls the drawer out, and thumbs through the files until he finds the proper spot.
It’s not that he’s out of ideas. He has those all the time. It’s that he doesn’t know how to make them work. And that, he suddenly realizes with a stab of hurt, is the hardest part.

In the kitchen, he pours another cup of coffee. It’s his fifth in ninety minutes. He’s not concerned with the consequences - either positive or negative. He’s not really thinking about it. Like everything else in his life, it’s an experiment. He does it to see what will happen.

The boss tells him he’ll be folding letters and sticking them in envelopes. There are 300 to do by the end of the day. Before he can moan, however, she shows him a machine.
This machine, she demonstrates, will take the envelopes here, (she points) and the letters here, and, by pressing this button, (his eyes widen) will do it for you.
The machine clicks to life, sucking the sheets of paper into its body and then spitting out, in rapid fire, perfectly folded envelopes that stack themselves neatly into a pile.
The boss leaves the mailroom.
When she returns, thirty minutes later, he has disassembled the machine.
He sits cross-legged, surrounded by the gutted parts spread over the floor. He’s taken it apart down to every last spring and screw and nut and bolt.
Looking up at the boss, a pathetic guilty expression, he knows he’s fired.

The next morning is as cold as the last. There’s rain falling, gray and depressing.
The boss shows the new temp where he’ll be sitting.
“Your hair’s wet,” says the new temp.
“Yeah, it’s raining out,” says the boss.
“It’s funny, though,” he says. “I noticed you're carrying an umbrella. I wonder – why didn’t you use it?”
She looks down at her purse. An umbrella handle barely peeks out.
“Oh,” she says. “I – I was carrying my coffee in one hand and my purse in the other. I guess I forgot I even brought my umbrella.”
The new temp nods. He doesn’t look completely convinced.
“So,” she says politely. “Where did you work before this?”
“I’m a private detective,” the man says. “But things are, you know, a little slow these days.”

Alone in his cubicle, he examines the framed photos on the desk. A little girl with a soccer ball. The same little girl sitting in a bathtub. A hand-made note, written with crayon: “Today I learned about the letter J.”
He takes a sip of coffee and starts entering numbers into a spread sheet, like he was told.

“Did you get a haircut?” he hears a woman in the next cubicle ask.
“Oh, you noticed?” he hears another woman say.
“It looks really good, girl.”
“Thank you!”
“Where did you get it done?”
“At a little place called Rosie’s, in Santa Monica. Have you heard of it?”
“No? Is it nice?”
“It’s where I go all the time.”
He continues to listen to them for the next hour, trying to massage the headache away.
He learns that Woman A is a vegetarian, and Woman B has a boyfriend who’s home sick with a cold.

Later, a woman peeks into his cubicle. Wearing a red sweater and blue jeans. Woman A.
“New?” she asks.
“No. Temping. They hinted it may be long-term but it looks like I’m just filling in for someone while she’s on vacation.”
He motions at the family photos.
“Roberta,” the woman says. “But she’s not on vacation. No, she's home with her daughter this week. Poor thing has the chicken pox."
The man frowns.
"She's lying," he says. "Look at this picture."
The little girl in the bathtub, covered in red spots.
"She's already had the chicken pox. You can't get them twice, not that soon. It's nearly impossible."
"What?" asks the woman, confused.
"Roberta was sitting right here at her desk when she told you that excuse, wasn't she?"
"Yes, but--"
"She needed an excuse to get off work, but didn't have one. Or maybe it fell through, I don't know. But then, sitting here, she looked forward, and poof - there it was."
He taps on the framed photo.
"The perfect excuse."
The woman stares at him for a second, then leans in and says, "Roberta's a nice woman, asshole. And her kid got the chicken pox. Again."
She leaves the man alone, and he returns to the spread sheet.

"We're going to lunch," says Woman B, a friendly smile on her face. "Come with us."
"No way," he says, pulling on his raincoat. "I don't like vegetarian food, and besides -"
He nods at the tissue in her hand.
"You've caught your boyfriend's cold."
Sitting alone in his car, eating a cold sandwich, the man watches the office workers leave for lunch together. Talking and laughing together.
What a sad life, he thinks. And realizes he's not sure who he just meant.

The weather is warm for the first time in a month. The employees yawn and wish each other good morning.
The boss shows the new temp where he'll be sitting.
"So," she says, looking at the man's unruly white beard. "Where did you work before this?"
"I was a clipper ship captain," the man says.
"Really?" says the boss. "So, if you don't mind my asking, why aren't you out right now, sailing the sea?"
"I don't know," he says sadly. "I suppose I'm adrift."

When the man is left alone in his cubicle, he stands up to estimate the size of the space. Four feet by four feet. He feels a sickening wave of claustrophobia.
He sits and closes his eyes and tries to picture the ocean. The sky.
But he hears the clicking of approaching high heel shoes on the tile floor, and snaps his eyes open, just before an employee walks past.
He feels a little like a prisoner, he thinks, and gets back to punching numbers on the keyboard, before another guard should catch him.

On his way out of the bathroom, he crosses paths with the receptionist. A lovely young lady with red, curly hair.
He tells her she looks very much like his first wife. And when the young lady asks, politely and innocently, who that was, the man begins to tell a tale.
It started, he said, in the South Seas.
The receptionist, now regretting her question, walks back to her desk at the head of the office lobby, and the man follows, still speaking.
He tells of the night he had to leave his wife on the island, and of the dangerous journey through the Pacific.
The receptionist picks up her phone, dials, and whispers desperately, "I think he's crazy. And I'm pretty sure I smell whiskey on his breath."
"When finally I returned home," he finishes. "My beautiful bride was dead."
His hand unconsciously moves to his left arm, on which, the receptionist notes, trails a faded tattoo out from his shirt sleeve. A design which could, maybe, be red curly hair.
The boss enters the lobby five minutes later, and finds the man bending over, looking into the aquarium.
"That is a most rare species," he says, quietly. "Tell me. Where was it caught?"
"It wasn't caught," the boss says. "It was purchased at a pet store. Now come on."
She leads him back to his cubicle, and warns him not to leave it again until his lunch break. The man sits back in front of the computer and moves the mouse to clear the screensaver.
"No," he says, looking at the walls of the cubicle. "It was caught."

His lunch hour arrives, and he wants to escape as far away as he can.
The sun is high and bright as he marches from the building, into the streets. He is instantly among businessmen and women. Briefcases and cellphones, and chatter about where to go for lunch.
Instinctively, he turns from them and walks the opposite way, wanting to push past the rat race, wanting to find solitude.
As he winds through unknown streets, he realizes that what he really desires is to become lost. To be somewhere unknown. To explore.
To discover.
He moves right and left, in and out of neighborhoods, on and off main streets, until he pauses on a corner, winded. The sun is hot, and he feels sweat building under his stocking hat.
Disappointed, he realizes that he has only twenty minutes left of his lunch, and, nearly worse, that he's hungry.
Looking up, he spies a cafe across the street. It's sign bares the image of a mermaid. It's name is familiar to him.
"Starbuck," he says. "Dear mate, what has happened to you?"
He waits in line with the same suit and tie businessmen he tried to avoid. They order lattes and double espressos. When it's his turn, the man orders a black coffee and, after a moment's hesitation, a walnut muffin.

When he returns to the office, he's hot and stinks of sweat (he hears the women complain as he walks by them). His boss is standing in his cubicle, waiting.
She says, "you're five minutes late."

"Oh, I wish I was in London." he sings to himself later. "Or some other seaport town.
"I'd put my foot on a steamboat and sail the ocean 'round."

THE END

Happy New Year
"Strike another match, Go start anew"

First Impressions

2007-11-10T00:57:00.000-08:00

I almost put on my "Writers Guild on Strike" t-shirt before leaving the apartment to go get some coffee. But I opted instead for a white button shirt, blue jeans, and my rumpled suit jacket. It's key also to picture me with fairly messy hair and a week old beard.

I stand at the little cream and sugar counter in Starbucks, and begin stirring things into my coffee. There's an older man standing beside me, adding sugar to his own.
It's a long, slightly awkward intimacy: both of us reaching for the half and half or the stir sticks at the same time. Then he breaks the silence.
"You look like a striking writer," he says.
For a second I think how strange it is that he said that, especially after I nearly wore the t-shirt, and I almost respond by telling him this, but can't think how to put it in words.
"Oh, no, I'm not," I say.
"Yeah," he says, as I turn to leave. "You look like a striking writer or a bum."

Turn and Reveal

2007-11-09T01:16:00.000-08:00

From "Thy Kingdom Come".
It's a horror movie.

From the Picket Line

2007-11-08T02:16:00.000-08:00

Mitch Hedberg once said "I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it."

The Writer’s Guild is on strike.
Which, honestly, didn’t mean anything to me until I was told that Favorite Comic Author Brian K. Vaughan was out in the street with a picket sign, somewhere in Burbank. So my friend and I went to see it in person.
It’s more real up close, of course. The sound of chanting and car horns, the red and black signs bobbing in the air, making a big scene in front of the big Warner Brothers gate.
We walked up to them like tourists, holding our cameras, grinning, looking from face to face in the hope of spotting someone recognizable. (Mr. Vaughan was not there.)

They crossed the street with each walk signal, then stood and waved their signs, then, when the light turned green, crossed again. They had an amazing amount of energy for people who had been out there since nine in the morning.
They chanted:
“Writers united, we will not be divided!”
And:
“Thanks to corporate greed, the public will have to read!”
And:
“If you don’t want us to picket, pay us when they click it!”
The latter being a reference to internet sales, which is one of their main arguments. Now renegotiating their contracts for the next fifteen years, the writers ask for royalties from internet based sales of film and TV. A seemingly small complaint today, but in the next fifteen years, the internet could be as big as DVD. As one sign phrased it “All we ask for is our future”.

We stepped up to the sign-in table and told the guy we were students in the film business (at a more respectable school than the one I actually graduated from three years ago), and he shook our hands with enthusiasm and gave us picket signs.
For the first thirty minutes, moving back and forth along the crosswalk, I felt entirely alien. Not wanting to introduce (or explain) myself, I kept my head down, avoided eye contact with the Real People, and prayed I could just blend in.
But by the next thirty minutes, the spirit of the whole thing just gets inside you.
Drummers (or writers, I should say) sat on the sidewalk and used overturned buckets to beat a rhythm to which we walked and bobbed our signs and chanted, and the beat got inside me. And along with it, a passion.
By the next hour I held my sign with an authentic sense of pride and righteousness, strange as that sounds. I waved to the cars who honked, or gave them the thumbs up, and the feeling of sticking out like a stranger melted away into being part of an odd family.
We met the writer of the Curious George movie, and one of the writers of Out of Jimmy’s Head, who turned out to be a fan of Y: The Last Man. Everyone welcomed us.

Guild rules say you have to spend at least twenty hours a week on the street with a picket sign, and so at five o’clock, as the sky turned gray and the weather got cold, they congratulated themselves on a good day and called it.
We tossed our signs in a pile, and said goodbye.
But not before snagging a free “Writers Guild On Strike” t-shirt.

Later that night, sitting in a Denny’s and wearing the shirts, we received unusually good service from the waitress. She refilled our coffee every ten minutes, and I wondered out loud if it had something to do with the shirts. A mixture of respect and admiration, and of a little pity also.
I wonder now if wearing this shirt everyday would be to my advantage. Receiving waves on the street and pampered with good service in restaurants.
Tourists united, we will not be divided.

Stay strong, oh my brothers.
Stay strong.

post #125: "SYSTEMS CHECK"

2007-11-07T02:42:00.000-08:00

Hello.

You may have noticed that September and October are missing.
I’ve spoken to the my lab assistants about this phenomenon, and they thoroughly checked the circuitry and fiddled with connections, and turned some dials and pressed some buttons, and came up empty handed.
Our best guess: September and October never happened.
We’re fairly satisfied with this conclusion. We certainly do not wish to blame “human error”.
The other scientists and myself here at gear-loose do apologize for this rather strange occurrence, and we can almost certainly guarantee you that September and October will return again next year.

For now, we’re going to just slip back into things and pretend like nothing happened. Enjoy November, kids!

Another One

2007-08-26T16:01:00.000-07:00

Now It's Wednesday

2007-08-22T18:11:00.000-07:00

Tony is wondering to himself if Cup Noodles has a higher nutritional value than Top Ramen because of the peas and carrots, and also because it's about fifteen cents more expensive.

(Tony really needs a job.)

Drawing Again

2007-08-14T00:31:00.000-07:00

And coloring.

Postcards of the Hanging

2007-08-03T17:26:00.000-07:00

It started to rain by the time Bob Dylan came on.

Red Rocks Amphitheater, Denver Colorado, is an outdoor stage - a semi-natural theater created by canyon walls of rock. When it rains, you will get wet.
The crowd begins to pull on rain coats and huddle under tarps. My brother and I, who came prepared with nothing more than baseball caps, set them on our heads and cup our hands over our beer. My brother is still just 20, but in a few more hours he will be 21.

The first song Dylan plays is "Rainy Day Women #12 & 351". (AKA: "Everyone Must Get Stoned".) Admittedly, one of my least favorites but the crowd responds well. The same crowd who sat outside their parked buses and offered us hippie beads and magic mushrooms as we hiked to the entrance.
I lean to my brother and ask him, joking (rather weakly), if he thinks Dylan chose to open with this because of Red Rocks. (Get it? Stoned? Rocks?)
And my brother shoots back, impressively, "I thought it was because it's raining".
Ah, touche.

Then, not long into the song, and rather miraculously considering the thick black clouds, the rain stops.

A few songs in, Dylan plays "Nettie Moore". It's my favorite from the show. He sings it clearly and patiently, (for a live Dylan song, it's remarkably close to the album version), and the audience seems to be hanging on his every word.
"Getting light outside, the temperature dropped," he sings.
"I think the rain has stopped."
And the crowd erupts in applause.

The complete set list was (according to expectingrain.com):
01. Rainy Day Women #12 & 351
02. When I Paint My Masterpiece
03. Watching the River Flow
04. Working Man's Blues
05. Rollin' and Tumblin'
06. Every Grain of Sand
07. Cry a While
08. Spirit on the Water
(There was a great crowd reaction to the lines "You think I'm over the hill, Think I'm past my prime?")
09. Friend of the Devil
(Grateful Dead cover -- Another huge hit with the middle aged tie-die T-shirt crowd.)
10. Highway 61 Revisited
11. Shooting Star
12. Most Likely You Go Your Way And I'll Go Mine
13. Nettie Moore
14. Summer Days
15. Masters of War

And for the encore:
16. Thunder on the Mountain
17. Blowin' in the Wind
(This modern, live version of Blowin' in the Wind just seems wrong. Like the rest of his new sound, it's an electric, ten-piece, honky-tonk blues rock song, and the only recognizable bit, aside from the lyrics, is the original melody which now comes in the form of an electric guitar solo. I've long accepted that you will never hear a live Dylan song performed exactly like the album version again, but still, it seemed almost wrong.)

In the end, he speaks to the audience for the first time all night:
"And now, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce you to my band."
And goes through them one by one, in a gravely, nearly indecipherable voice.

Then they all line up, in a flying V formation, and bow most professionally, and the show's over.

My brother and I walk the long, dirt road back to the car, for the most part pleased with the evening. (He wanted to hear "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right." Myself: "Visions of Johanna".)
The other cars, as they pull into the slow traffic exiting onto the freeway, are all blaring Dylan CDs of course. Familiar, nostalgic, hit songs.
It's strange. You can't help but shake your head.

-- Typing with just one hand, very slowly.
Despite this, frequent posting to resume.

I Still Wander This Parapet

2007-07-10T02:19:00.000-07:00

I first heard The Decemberists last November when a friend played for me the song Leslie Anne Levine, because, she explained, she knew I liked Edward Gorey.

True enough, the song - a narrative tale told from the perspective of a wandering dead child in 1842 London - was Gorey to the bone, and became an instant favorite of mine.
But their other stuff - tales of sea voyages, and “chimbley” sweeps, and mariners trapped in the belly of whales - made them a favorite group, and by March I owned all four of their albums plus two EP’s.
I’ve always been a lyrics guy, and now I’d found a group whose lead songwriter was an English major, his sister a published author, and whose lyrics were all their own complete story - some epic Dickensian novels, others sweet little shorts - but all well worded and intelligent, and with the same innocent, child-like sense of fantastic adventure you find in Wes Anderson movies.
A certain song, which you ignored before, can suddenly open up and you understand its meaning and the narrative behind it. Over time, each song sort of "opens up" in turn. Being an addict for stories, listing to The Decemberists, for me, does nearly the same as reading a Neil Gaiman book or a Harlan Ellison story.
Plus, musically, I’m a sucker for the accordion.

Saturday night, The Decemberists played at the Hollywood Bowl, backed, for the first time, by the LA Philharmonic Orchestra.
I came with a group of friends and between the four of us we drank five bottles of wine, and a couple glasses of beer, and had a great time.
The set list (as I remember it) was:
01. The Crane Wife 1 & 2
02. The Infanta
03. We Both Go Down Together
04. The Bagman’s Gambit
05. Odalisque
06. Los Angeles, I’m Yours
07. The Perfect Crime
08. The Tain (all 23 minutes of it)
09. O Valencia
10. I Was Meant for the Stage

And, for the encore:
11. The Chimbley Sweep.

Which was a tad disappointing since they only played two of my favorites, and more than a couple of my least favorites, and ignored the ones my friends and I really wanted to hear, namely The Mariner’s Revenge Song, and maybe The Legionnaire’s Lament, and certainly Leslie Anne Levine.

I have heard that, upon realizing it may be their most popular, the band has stopped performing The Mariner’s Revenge song, as though it’s their “Stairway to Heaven”. If so, and the rationale is to maintain their indie rock cred by forcing fans to appreciate their least favorite songs, then this concert was like one big statement to the 20,000 seat amphitheater.
Or, it could just be they played the songs best suited for orchestral accompaniment, and, possibly due to a forcing of their hand, the singles off the new album (of which itself I'm not the biggest fan of).

But at least now, nine months after first hearing them, I have a t-shirt, which is pretty much the final step in rock band fandom.
And it has a picture of a clipper ship on it. Which makes me quite happy.

Night of Independence Day

2007-07-05T23:23:00.000-07:00

The strange thing about the Fourth of July is that if you’re in the right place at the right time, and you’re willing to believe the lie you’re telling yourself, and you squint your eyes just a little, then you’re really walking through an urban world war. And that crowd of drunks, and that mass of people, are really panicked survivors, acting with deranged mob mentality.
Driving through them, trying to look for parking, they block the roads, walk out in front of me, launch firecrackers and smoke bombs at the car. Things explode from behind. Someone in the road pounds on my hood. Any second, I’m expecting the mob to pile around my car like it’s the last working vehicle on earth, smash the windshield out and rock it side to side, trying to either get in or destroy it.
Once the big ones start firing in the distance - you can’t really see them, just the smoke in the sky over the rooftops, changing from red to green to blue, and you can certainly hear them - once they start, all the rules and traffic laws and decent human behavior vanish. Everyone for themselves. Desperate to find parking, cars stop in the middle of the street, hit their hazard lights, and get out to watch the clouds change color, holding each other arm in arm.
Others park in the red, block hydrants, block in other cars. I drive - steering through drunks and flaring sparkler fountains and unseen pops and bangs - until I’m somewhere off the map, and there, like a mirage is an empty space.
On foot, I push through the zombie masses, no idea where I am. We’re all walking the same direction, through an apocalypse, guided by the colors in the sky which are becoming clearer as we near. I pass abandoned cars, shattered bottles, families camped outside storefronts, lawn chairs on rooftops, Springsteen turned up to full blast, loud excited drunks, violent drunks. I make my way to Main Street, which will soon become a pier, and then, the ocean - the end of the world - and, somewhere in it all, my friends who are waiting for me.
It’s not ideal - watching the fireworks show, celebrating, while pushing through thousands of strangers and hurrying to the end, but it’s not bad. If you squint your eyes a little bit, you’re really in the middle of an alien invasion. Some world gone mad.
I’m surprised I don't see any looting.
Eventually I find my friends down ten blocks of suburban mayhem. Explosions from every direction. Cars, stupid enough to drive, assaulted with smoke bombs and cherry bombs and other things that explode. The unanimous human spirit has boiled over into something insane. Like the public has, through a collective conscious, approved anarchy permissible, at least for one night. Anything goes.
I’m on the balcony of a friend’s coworker’s friend’s apartment, with a great view of the street, and watching it all. It’s amazing. The neighbors in the balcony across the way throw cans and bottles down at walkers below. People piss in the street. Break the decorations off houses. At one point, a complete stranger walks up the stairs and enters the apartment and, without a word, leaves after a few minutes. No one knew who he was, or really cared.
We find a bar somewhere around midnight, serving the drinks in unbreakable plastic cups. The comradery in the room is overpowering. There’s a spirit that every stranger is a brother. Every brother a friend. Everyone you meet, slapping you, asking how you are.
We’re there for an hour, and then the power goes dead.
Blackness. Like the apocalypse finally came.
In the dark, security guards force us out the door. Cops demand that we step at least four feet away from the bar. Everyone's ordered to go home. The atmosphere grows angry again.
All the electricity on Main Street, for some mysterious reason, has gone out. Either blown fuses, or government conspiracy, or the end of days.
So, like survivors in a post apocalypse world, we walk through dead, blackened buildings, down the ashen road, littered with the burnt out remains of sparkler fountains and bottle rockets, and back home. The smell of fire and smoke. The distant sound of explosions.
It takes me forty minutes to find where I parked. I make it back home.
The United States sleeps one off.

Today, A Good Day for Comics:
Y: The Last Man #57
Runaways #21
All Star Superman #8
Action Comics #851 (in 3-D)
Detective Comics #834
Midnighter #9
Faker #1

Angel, Grant Me Mercy

2007-07-03T19:18:00.000-07:00

Dear [roommate]:

I am but a retired pizza box.
I had a good life, I served you well, I kept your pizza contained upon delivery. But alas, those days are over. I am empty now. I have no more use for you. I’m sorry old friend, but I’m afraid my purpose in life is over.
I hear they have a nice spot all picked out for me in pizza box heaven (aka: dumpster), where I may meet some old friends and family of mine. They’re waiting for me.
This refrigerator is lonely, and cold on my old folds. Why won’t you let me die?
Please. Please kill me.

Sincerely,
Your former pizza box

Who Killed the Action Hero?

2007-06-30T17:02:00.000-07:00

A scene from Live Free or Die Hard:
We’re inside some industrial site. John McClane, sober, not smoking, not cursing, not hung-over, but still recognizable, is getting his ass kicked by your typical hot Asian assassin chick, who, to no surprise suddenly displays martial arts skill. She kicks him through at least two windows before he gets up, recoiling, and shouts:
“I’ve had it with this kung fu bullshit!”

Which instantly reminds the audience who killed the old school action hero.

After The Matrix, and the Matrix knockoffs, and the kung fu, and the CG, and the super heroes, guys like John McClane were washed up and over with. The days of practical effects, real stunt work, real things smashing into other real things, the bullets, the tough guys, were dead. The cyber goth kung fu superheroes had killed them.
So McClane, clothes torn, face and arms bleeding, stumbles to his feet like an aging boxer, gone for so many years, and beats the kung fu chick into the floor with his bare fist, leaving clumps of bloody hair sticking to his knuckles.

The audience applauds. “Now that’s how it’s done.”

There is a strong theme running through Live Free or Die Hard.
Old school vs. new.
Age vs. youth.
Analog vs. digital.

It’s a revisionist film, wherein the Has Been comes back into the lime light, a relic in a new world which has passed him by, and shows that he still has it where it counts: that is, all the cyber tech shit in the world is no match for a good, old fashioned punch to the teeth.

The villains - nowhere near as much fun or in the same league as the Gruber brothers - are a group of young guys with computers. Like their predecessors, they disguise their heist within a terrorist plot. But this time their advantage is hacker know-how. The movie seems to be saying that today, the real heists, the real thefts, are not done with ski masks and guns, but with the internet. It’s a digital era. A tap of the keyboard and you can control anything.
McClane, representing the opposite end - nearly defining the term analog - marches through the digital era. Over his head, he lets the computer whiz do the typing, and himself the physical duties. The very idea of him combating technology with kicks and punches sends a strong message. Take that, CG! Take that, Green Screen! Hey, all you entirely digital characters, here’s a fire extinguisher to the face!

Later in the movie, he kills a skinny, acrobatic character, leaping around in tights, after naming him Spider Boy.

But it’s not all winks to the audience and fuck you’s to the action movies of the last decade, I was surprised at ways his age was addressed. A kind of subtle, melancholy scene as he drives down the street.
“You’ve killed people before?” the kid asks.
“I used to.” He says. “But not in a long time.”

The McClane we know has changed a bit. He’s matured a little, cleaned himself up. Doesn’t crack quite so many jokes. He seems mostly like a guy ready for retirement, who cares the most about his family. It’s sort of a sad way to go out of the series. Like peeking into his life one last time, seeing one more adventure (not in the same league as his others) that maybe we weren’t really meant to see.

Because he’s old, now. The world is different and the villains are younger. The kid he has to protect doesn’t know who Credence Clearwater Revival is, as it plays in the car. The one bit of technology that McClane recognizes, and later uses in the end of the film, is an old CB radio.
This villain -- this young punk, this whinny nerd with a web cam -- he’s no threat at all. We know this. After all the things McClane has done in the past, this guy is just waiting to get his ass kicked. But that knowledge - that anticipation - of the old guy swinging one at this young, smug punk, is (if not suspenseful) at least satisfying indeed. It’s the dark knight returns.

Having said that, Live Free or Die Hard is really not much more than a mediocre Bruce Willis action movie. A generic composite of action set-ups that worked better in other movies, and without the great characters, or villains, or patience, or the head-on go-for-broke action that made the original films classics. It’s not Die Hard. It doesn’t come close. And comparing it to the original trilogy just makes you really depressed.

But there was at least some thought that went in it. An effort to make this not only a comeback for a character, or a franchise, but for an entire style of action movies. Unfortunately, and somewhat ironically, their plan to resuscitate the classics only means the return of familiar action set-ups.
“Hey, I remember when they did this is True Lies.
“And it was better.”

If filmmaking trends are reciprocal, then hopefully we’ll see the return of the late 80’s, early 90’s action movies. Judging from the enthusiastic reaction of the crowd, and the sold out showtimes, that seems very likely. When I watched this movie, the crowd went nuts. Like they’ve never seen anything like it before. And then I realized, as I filed out the theater, listening to the CCR song over the end credits, that in this PG-13 audience, they really hadn’t seen this stuff before. All the crowd were kids.
And I knew how John McClane must feel.

In Which I Play With Chalk

2007-06-27T16:28:00.001-07:00

It's been over a week since I participated in the 2007 Pasadena Chalk Festival. (http://www.pasadenachalkfestival.com)
Today, I finally uploaded the pictures off my camera.

To see this one, and 11 more very similar pictures, visit my flickr page: *
http://www.flickr.com/photos/drmecha

I came to the festival as a kind of assistant to a friend of mine, who did all the hard work herself (made the arrangements, filled out the forms, showed up early to reserve a good spot of sidewalk -- not to mention paying the entrance fee, submitting the preliminary sketch, and deciding on what to draw), and then I mostly stood around, colored the occasional bit, and took pictures.

We drew a Koi pond, with a semi-3D perspective, as though the pond existed on the sidewalk and you, the viewer, were looking down into it.

The first day of the festival was Saturday, and she had shown up bright and early (I believe about 8:00 or earlier) to make arrangements, get settled in, and begin the mural. Being a Saturday, (that is, the day following Friday night) I finally made it to Pasadena at noon.
We spent Saturday drawing fish, carefully copying photos from a library book. That book, in the end, was stained with so much chalk I wouldn't be surprised if they charged her a penalty.
For some reason, all three fish I drew were white with red spots. Out of all the fish I had to choose from, I kept picking those. I think maybe, subconsciously, they resembled the Japanese flag to me.
I drew two fish side by side, the same species, one larger than the other, to suggest they were related, and hoped that all the observant kids who walked by would pick up on this detail and grab their parent by the hand, and point at the drawing and say "look, they're related" but it never happened.

On Sunday, we came back for the second and final day. This time, I showed up around 9:00, and we mostly worked on coloring all the water in, and adding detail to the surrounding brick.
It was a very crowded day, due to the fact that there was also a Vintage Car Show being held in the street directly beside us.
Our location at the festival was strange. Not part of the main floor, we were instead situated to the side, in an adjacent shopping plaza they titled "Animation Alley", and which was supposed to feature entirely cartoon murals.
But this proved somewhat advantageous, since Animation Alley also acts as one of the main entrances from the parking garage to the plaza. Meaning, that a good number of visitors, out celebrating Father's Day by coming to see the Chalk Festival (not to mention the car show), walked immediately into our neck of the woods.
From their perspective, they were greeted by mostly less-than-brilliant cartoon chalk paintings (Dracula sitting up in his coffin, talking on a cell phone, and looking annoyed, while the Bat-Signal is seen through the window). Then, the visitors, making their way out of the alley, come to ours - a refreshingly sensible and (semi) realistic mural of fish. Which means that all throughout Sunday, we received way more attention and praise than we probably deserved.
"This is the best one I've seen yet!" they say. But they haven't even made it to the main event.
Where there were absolutely awesome murals drawn by absolutely professional artists.

Later that day, finished with the mural and waiting for the judging to begin, I was sitting down and growing bored.
Seeing as I had a box of chalk and a blank sheet of sidewalk, I started sketching Batman. It was a very small, very rough sketch, and it amazed me (and made me very happy) when it quickly started getting as much attention as the koi pond beside it. Tourists from Japan would pause by the sketch and snap multiple photographs with thousand dollar cameras.

I moved over to stone bench, and next to a flower pot, started sketching Superman.
Within minutes, I was aware that I was attracting a large crowd. I didn't look up from the drawing, but could see their shadows, and hear them talking.
"Look, he's drawing the hand now!"
"See how he sketches it first?"
The drawing wasn't coming out very well at all, and if it wasn't for the crowd of onlookers, I would have given up and stopped. But they were watching my every move, and so I kept at it, trying to make it as nice I could.
The pressure I felt was truly terrifying.
But I didn't want to look up, or I knew they would leave.
So, with strained determinism, I continued on until finally my friend arrived. He made a comment, and I at last looked up, and the crowd disappeared. But for a moment, I knew what it was like to be a street artist. And it's frightening.

At the end of the weekend, I was tired and sore and bruised (the knees, especially) and sunburned, and filthy with chalk. Our group of friends went next door to a restaurant, and I had a burger and a beer that really hit the spot.

Again next year?
You bet.

* A note on my flickr page:
I have, apparently, used up my three alloted albums (or "sets"), and it will cost me money now to add more. Because I'm cheap, the Pasadena Chalk Festival pictures were added to a now ongoing flood of photos, all without clear divisions. Which means you'll have to click the arrow to advance. Just deal with it.

Sing a Little Bit of These Non-Working Man Blues

2007-06-25T17:47:00.000-07:00

It's strange. My thumb won't stop twitching.
My right thumb. It spasms every few seconds. Then it goes away. And, a few minutes later when I think about it, it comes back.

I wonder if I've been drinking too much coffee.

Restless, I get up and go outside onto the balcony; walking barefoot over the thick black dirt and ancient cigarette butts. The neighbor kids are playing soccer and screaming in Spanish. The air is hot. The light, very bright.

I sit down again at my desk, where it's dark and cool. I'm trying to draw a city scene off a photo I took a couple months ago. So far, it's looking alright. The thinking is: I need more stuff like this. I'm making a website (and deleting my old art blog) and filling it with artwork that is hopefully a little more than just storyboards and superheroes.

I start the CD player again. The new White Stripes album has been in since last Tuesday. I can't stop listening to this song "Catch Hell Blues."

Restless, I get up again and pace around the apartment. I wonder if I've been drinking too much coffee. My thumb is twitching.

The kitchen floor is sticky on my bare feet. We should mop. We should do dishes. I pour a glass of water, and drink it while looking out the window. Think about making some noodles. Decide I'm not hungry. Pace around. Sit back at the desk.

Ratatouille has scored, as of today, 100% on rottentomatoes.com.

"To watch Ratatouille is to recognize we're living in another golden age of American animation."
- Peter Canavese, Groucho Reviews
"Brad Bird wrote and directed Ratatouille and tops his previous work. Since his work includes The Iron Giant and The Incredibles, this puts him somewhere between Chuck Jones and Michelangelo."
- David Edelstein, New York Magazine

This makes me really happy. I decide I'm going to watch both Bird's earlier movies before Friday.

I'm trying not to get distracted. I won't allow myself to turn on the TV, and am limiting how long I browse the internet for. Last week was a failure. I don't want to waste this one too.

The website builder has about 50 varieties of templates to choose from, as you're starting to design your site. It's ridiculous. You can either choose the business man in glasses typing at a computer with a green background, or the business man in glasses typing at a computer with a blue background.
I want to strip it away to nothing and build from there. But I'm not sure how. There's books at the library on HTML, but I owe them $25 in late fees.

I decide to make some tea. Too much coffee. I'm too restless. Can't sit down for longer than ten minutes. Don't have the patience to draw right now. My thumb still twitching.

The daylight's nearly over. Tuesday is almost gone. I've gotten into a habit of waking up past noon. That was not something I wanted at all. For nearly five months I was officially a morning person. Not by choice - getting up early makes me physically ill. But it's a productive state.
Now my body has the opportunity to take whatever waking schedule it wants, and it chooses, naturally, to wake up at 1:00 pm. This is what I fell into. This is, I guess, my body's natural and preferred sleep schedule. It's a lazy bastard.

I try to set goals for myself. I cannot waste another week.

It's been eleven days since my temp job at UCLA ended.
I am unemployed.
I am lazy.
I am restless.
My thumb won't stop twitching.

I Dreamt I Died Twice

2007-06-12T08:38:00.000-07:00

And Other True Stories

I was sitting at the patio section of The Pig and Whistle on Hollywood Blvd, sipping cold Hefeweizen with a friend from New York on a Friday afternoon, and he begins to tell me about a dream he had.
Everyone around him, he says, becomes a zombie.
People he knows, friends, family, all transform to zombies before his eyes and he, the last remaining human, runs for his life. My friend scales a chain-link fence, gets to the other side but, ultimately, is attacked and killed. He's dead.
In the dream he says, this happens on June fourth.
On Hollywood Blvd, drinking beer in the afternoon, it's June second.
"How do you know it was June fourth?" I ask.
He tells me he just knew. By he logic of dreams, he knew it was the fourth. I nod, and drink, and the day goes on.

My friend's in California for vacation. Trying to keep him entertained, I take him to Hollywood, Santa Monica pier, Venice Beach, etc. But the main event is Disneyland. The destination of any true California vacationer.
We meet up with some friends he went to school with and plan to go as a group to Disney California Adventure, the recently added second, and more "adult oriented," park across from the main one.

As it happens, the day we're going is June fourth.

Disneyland.1967.
Ricky Lee Yama, 17, of Hawthorn, California, was killed while jumping between two moving PeopleMover cars as the ride was passing through a tunnel. Yama stumbled and fell onto the track, where an oncoming train of cars crushed him beneath its wheels and dragged his body a few hundred feet before being stopped by a ride operator. The attraction had only been open for one month at the time.*

Dream 1
June third. The night before we leave, I hang out with the group at their apartment. We have some pizza, some drinks, watch a movie, and as it gets late, I go home. And sleep. And dream.

It's a crowded place.
I'm standing with a man I know. Someone I'm close to, maybe even a relative. The man has a gun and he's debating whether to shoot me or the figure to my left.
There is an incredible amount of pressure on the man to make a decision on who to shoot; he's clearly being forced against his will. Finally, after pointing the gun back and forth, he decides which one of us is more useless - more expendable - and, with a pained look of regret, the man shoots me at point blank range.
The bullet enters my left side, near my naval, and creates only a very small wound, like a pin hole, that dribbles only small amounts of blood, and I wander away.
It's night outside. There's snow covering the streets and falling, barely, from the sky. It's somewhere foreign to me. I wander around and suddenly realize, quite casually, that I'm in Japan.
I'm limping, bent over my side as though I have a bad cramp. The bullet hole leaks a trail of blood on the snow, and I begin to search for a place to die. Somewhere quiet and tucked away and private. It's needs to be private. But as I turn the corners of the street and limp through the alleyways, all I see are crowds and cars and bright city lights.
There is a certain urgency to my search. The gunshot, despite its small size and lack of an exit wound, is gradually killing me, and I know that if I don't find the perfect spot to die in peace, I will, ready or not, soon die on my feet. Collapsed in the middle of the crowd. So I limp, and search, and bleed, and --
My phone vibrates.

In the waking world, someone is calling me. I get up, check my phone. Five minutes later, I fall asleep again.

Disneyland.1966.
Thomas Guy Cleveland, 19, of Northridge, California, was struck and killed by the monorail, dragging him 30 to 40 feet down the track. This occurred on graduation night while he was trying to sneak into the park by climbing onto the monorail track.**

Dream 2
It's a crowded place.

An outdoor shopping center. It's night. I am one person in a crowd of a hundred, and we are being held hostage by a group of men in masks.
The crowd has given up. Afraid and sobbing, we huddle together on the ground, as victims. There is an understanding that the situation is beyond hope. Our cell phones are either taken away, or never existed in the first place. The cops are not coming. No one can save us. We are doomed.
The men in masks (Cloth material, pulled over the head like Spider-Man's, but with a scull design) are slowly leading the group away, one by one, to be executed.
The men pick people from the crowd at random. They seem to tower over us against the night sky, like giants pointing with machine guns. I'm sitting down, squeezed in between two strangers, and hoping they won't see me.
The chosen victims stand up in turn and are led away. Soon, our numbers dwindle. There is an understanding that it's coming to an end, and only a few more of us will be chosen. The rest may be safe.
The men scan the crowd, looking for just one more person. There are maybe ten of us now. I crouch low within the other people, terrified, not looking at the gunmen, and pray I won't be chosen.
Of course, I am. As though they can read my mind, and picked me because I was the most afraid.
The others I'm with stare at me -- they seem old, probably no good -- and they move back to make room for me as I stand up. The gunman points the way, and I follow slowly and obediently. I know I'm going to die, but the thought only makes me sad, not angry or afraid. I've given up the will to live.
There's a giant wall in front of me. The others who were chosen are there also, waiting for me to join them. I'm led to the front, facing the wall. Standing there, the awareness suddenly hits me that the crowd is actually positioned on a kind of stacked-seating arena, all facing the wall, which is at the front row.
I look down to my left, and there's a little girl. Instinctively, we hold hands.
I ask her what her name is, and she tells me.
I ask her how old she is, and she says eleven.
She seems calm, brave. Not afraid to die.
The ground under our feet begins to fill with a steaming green liquid. No one panics. The acid rapidly rises, boiling. It burns away flesh. My lower half becomes a skeleton, and within moments, so does the rest of me.

I awaken on my own. It's June forth, and I'm going to Disneyland.

Disneyland. 1973.
Bogden Delaurot, 18, of Brooklyn, New York, drowned while attempting to swim across the "Rivers of America". Delaurot and his 10-year-old brother stayed on the island past closing time by hiding in an area that is off-limits to guests. When they wanted to leave the island, they decided to swim across the river. Bogden carried his younger brother on his back, as the younger brother was unsure how to swim, but Bogden drowned halfway through the swim. His body was found the next morning. The younger brother was able to stay afloat by "dog paddling" until a ride operator rescued him.***

Disneyland. 2007.
It's June fourth. But I think, as we walk through the gate and are blasted by bright colors and happy music, my friend has forgotten all about his prophetic dream, and I've forgotten to remind him of it.

It's a crowded place.
Made to look as though the entire state of California has been condensed into one amusement park. We do a couple roller coasters, a couple simulators, a couple take-you-up-and-drop-you, and watch a Muppet Show in 3-D.
It's a good day. Warm. Parents push their kids in strollers, and young couples wear Mickey/Minnie wedding hats. It's June fourth in The Happiest Place on Earth, and it's almost surprising that nothing goes wrong.
Maybe we're on the wrong side of the park.

In Disneyland, there are no outbreaks of zombies, no gunmen, no mass murder acid baths.
But there are ghosts.

*, **, ***
From Wikipedia, "Incidents at Disney parks"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incidents_at_Disney_parks

Better Than Nothing

2007-05-30T13:28:00.000-07:00

It was suggested that I should post more stuff here.

OK. Here's a Garfield cartoon missing Garfield's thought balloons. Not only is more accurate from John point of view, but it's more funny.

And there's more where that came from.

I've been too busy and/or lazy to write stuff, but in the past couple weeks I have:

Sneaked into the Fangoria convention using counterfeit passes.
Met Wheezy Joe*.
Been tossed around like a drunken rag doll in a rockabilly mosh pit.
Attended the Renaissance Fair.
Read three new Warren Ellis graphic novels.
Got another person hooked on Y: The Last Man
Attended a Memorial Day Fair on the Hermosa Beach Pier.
Watched a Jimi Hendrix impersonator play Purple Haze.
Thoroughly enjoyed Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. (Silas.)
Spilled some coffee on the sleeve of my coffee-colored shirt, thus luckily avoiding embarrassment.

*You know, the hit man from Intolerable Cruelty.